COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CONTRIBUTIONS 
TO 

PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 
Vol. X No. 2 



THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM 



IN 



MODERN THOUGHT 



WILLIAM HALLOCK JOHNSON, Ph.D. 




August, 1903 
The Macmillan Co., 66 Fifth Avenue, New Tokk 
Mayer and Muller, Markgrafenstrasse, Berlin 

Price 75 cents 



Columbia University Contributions 

TO 

PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 



The Department of Philosophy and Psychology, and Teachers Col- 
lege, Columbia University, issue at irregular intervals a series of contri- 
butions on philosophical, psychological J and educational subjects. The 
following numbers have been published: 

VOLUME I 

1. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. A Study in the Origin of German Realism. 

By Norman Wilds, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, University of 
Minnesota. 8vo, paper, pp. 77. Price, 60 cents net. 

2. Kant's Inaugural Dissertation of 1770. Including a translation of 

the Dissertation, together with an Introduction and Discussion. By 
W. J. EckoEF, Ph.D., Principal of the Woodcliff School, South 
Orange, N. J. 8vo, paper, pp. 101. Price, 90 cents net. 

3. The Ethical System of James Martineau. By Joseph h. Hertz, 

Ph.D., Rabbi, Witwatersrand Congregation, Johannesburg, South 
Africa. 8vo, paper, pp. 85. Price 60 cents net. 

4. Friedrich Eduard Beneke : The Man and His Philosophy. By 

Francis Burke Brandt, Ph.D., Professor of Education, Central 
High School, Philadelphia, Pa. 8vo, paper, pp. 167. Price, $1. 00 net. 

VOLUME II 

1. Hegel as Educator. By Frederick Ludlow Luqueer, Ph.D., Prin- 

cipal of P. S. No. 126, Brooklyn, N. Y. 8vo, paper, pp. 185. Price, 
$1.00 net. 

2. Hegel's Doctrine of the Will. By John Angus Mac Vanned, Ph.D., 

Instructor in Philosophy and Education, Teachers College, Columbia 
University. 8vo, paper, pp. 102. Price, $1.00 net. 

3. The Basis of Early Christian Theism. By Lawrence T. Cole, 

Ph.D. Warden of St. Stephen's College, Annandale, N. Y. 8vo, 
paper. Price, 50 cents net. 

4. Early American Philosophers. By Adam Lerov Jones, Ph.D., 

Tutor in Philosophy in Columbia University. 8vo, paper. Price, 75 
cents net. 

VOLUME III 

1. The Formal and Material Elements of Kant's Ethics. By William 

Morrow Washington, Ph.D., sometime Scholar in Philosophy, 
Columbia University. 8vo, paper. Price 60 cents net. 

2. A Syllabus of Psychology. By James H. Hyslop, Ph.D., sometime 

Professor of Logic and Ethics in Columbia University. 8vo, cloth. 
Price $1.00 net. 

3-4. A Syllabus of an Introduction to Philosophy. By Walter T. 
Marvin, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Philosophy in Western Re- 
serve University. 8vo, cloth, pp. x+152. Price, $1.25 net. 



2 

THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM 
EST MODERN THOUGHT 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CONTRIBUTIONS 

TO 

PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 
Vol. X No. 2 



THE TREE-WILL PROBLEM 



MODERN THOUGHT 



BY 

WILLIAM HALLOCK JOHNSON, Ph.D. 




August, 1903 
The Macmillan Co., 66 Fifth Avenue, New York 
Mayer and Muli.er, Markgrafenstrasse, Berlin 

Price 75 cents 



: 









Copyright, 1903, 

BY 

WILLIAM HALLOCK JOHNSON. 



Gift 
The University 

Mr 3 '05 



Uj 



PREFATORY NOTE 



Since its acceptance as a doctor's thesis in June, 1903, 
this essay has been carefully revised with some additions, 
and references have been freely made to literature which 
has appeared during the past twelve months. For helps re- 
ceived in its preparation and in other ways, the thanks of 
the writer are due to Professors J. McK. Cattell and C. A. 
Strong, and to Drs. A. L. Jones and W. H. Sheldon. 

July, 1903. 

i35] 5 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/freewillproblemiOOjohn 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction 9 

I 
Free- Will and the Psychophysical Question . . 12 

II 
Free-Will and Evolution 38 

III 
The Consciousness of Freedom 52 

IV 
Freedom as Ethical Postulate 67 

V 

Free- Will and Theology 84 

[137 



THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM IN 
MODERN THOUGHT 



INTRODUCTION 



It is now some twenty years since Professor James opened 
his famous address on the " Dilemma of Determinism " with 
the remark that he knew of no subject which was less worn 
out than the free-will controversy. Subsequent events have 
justified his opinion, and various circumstances, among 
which the influence of Professor James' polemic is not unim- 
portant, have conspired to bring forward again this world- 
old problem, and make it at the beginning of our century 
one of the prime subjects of philosophic discussion. Au- 
thoritative announcements that the free-will doctrine has 
been " shattered " by modern science or that the problem 
has been " dropped " by modern philosophy have not been 
wanting, but in the light of recent discussion these seem, to 
say the least, premature. The writings of Martineau, Brad- 
ley, Ward and Royce, not to mention Howison, Mallock and 
the authors of " Personal Idealism," give evidence of a deep 
and widespread philosophical interest, and this interest may, 
perhaps, excuse the present attempt to show how the prob- 
lem presents itself to the modern scientific and ethical con- 
sciousness. 

If we go back to Greek philosophy, we find that the free- 
will question emerged as a problem in ethics. Plato and 
Aristotle give us no detailed nor comphensive treatment, 
and perhaps no unambiguous answer. Certain passages in 
139] 9 



IO THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [^q 

both writers, however, undoubtedly favor the libertarian 
position, and here, as has been remarked of Plato, " a 
psychological decision " is reached " on essentially ethical 
grounds." J In the later moral systems, Stoic and Epicurean, 
the discussion of the problem became more prominent, and 
its metaphysical bearings were clearly brought out. The 
Stoic, though emphasizing the dignity of human nature and 
the power of man to rise superior to the accidents of fortune, 
decided against free-will in the interests of a monistic doc- 
trine of fate or providence ; the Epicurean, on the other 
hand, holding that free-will was necessary to the attainment 
of the highest happiness, sought a metaphysical ground for 
it in an assumed " declination " in the primeval atoms. 

The problem became more acute in the form in which it 
was raised by Christian theology, which deepened at the 
same time the sense of guilt and responsibility, and of de- 
pendence upon divine grace for all spiritual good. The 
relation of free-will to the divine attributes of omniscience 
and omnipotence, to the origin of moral evil and to the ad- 
ministration of divine grace, furnished the subjects of the 
great theological debate carried on successively between Au- 
gustinian and Pelagian, between Thomist and Scotist, and 
between Calvinist and Arminian. 

The roots of modern discussion are to be found in the psy- 
chological and psychophysical theories of Descartes, Spinoza 
and Leibnitz. Its course has been influenced also by Hume's 
treatment of causation, and most of all by Kant's doctrine of 
man as a citizen of two worlds, in one of which he is phe- 
nomenally determined, and in the other noumenally free. 
While the free-will question is primarily a psychological one, 
having to do with the analysis of volition and its relation to 
the other elements of consciousness, it has come to have im- 
portant connections with physical science, as well as with 

1 Windelband : History of Philosophy^ p. 191. 



j 4 1 ] INTR OD UC TION ! i 

ethics, metaphysics and theology. It may be said that the 
psychophysical aspect of the question is just now most promi- 
nent, and, of course, there can be no adequate treatment of 
this aspect without taking into account the physiology of the 
brain and nervous system, the physical law of the conserva- 
tion of energy, and the biological doctrine of evolution. Un- 
derlying the scientific form of the discussion, and lending it 
zest and interest, are always the deeper ethical and spiritual 
issues supposed to be involved. In general it may be said 
that the discussion takes now a wider range than ever before, 
while its storm-center for the present is the relation between 
mind and brain. We shall find it convenient to take up first 
those phases of the subject most closely related to physical 
science, and shall then consider its relation to modern psy- 
chology, ethics and theology. 



I 

FREE-WILL AND THE PSYCHOPHYSICAL QUESTION 

The relation between mind and body is a question now 
well to the fore in philosophical discussion. There are three 
generic theories now current, automatism, parallelism and 
interactionism, and these have historic roots in the specula- 
tions of Descartes and his successors. Interactionism is the 
successor of Descartes' influxus physicus ; automatism is 
an application to man of his mechanical theory of animal 
movement; while parallelism may be regarded as a blending 
of Spinoza's monistic theory of one underlying unknown 
substance with two parallel attributes, and of Leibnitz' plu- 
ralistic doctrine of monads inaccessible to each other's influ- 
ence, but mirroring each other's movements in virtue of a 
pre-established harmony. 

Modern theories are often held in a tentative form, subject 
to modification by epistomological criticism. Kant found 
in the difficulties which beset alike the influxus physicus and 
the pre-established harmony and the supernatural assistance 
theories an argument for his own theory of knowledge, and 
set the question in a new form, " How external intuition is 
possible in any thinking subject?" To this he replied: 
"No human being can return an answer." 1 It is usual for 
recent writers to begin with brain-physiology and physics 
and to end with the theory of knowledge. 

We are concerned with the psychophysical question only 
in so far as it affects the question of freedom. Two kinds 
of freedom may here be distinguished : freedom of expres- 

1 Critique of Pure Reason, Max Miiller's trans., 1896, p. 318. 
12 [142 



143] THE PSYCHOPHYSICAL QUESTION 13 

sion, or the ability to express a volition in bodily move- 
ment; and freedom of initiation, or the ability to form a 
purpose without being determined thereto by purely physio- 
logical conditions. The first question is, whether conscious- 
ness enters as an efficient agent into the time and space 
world ; and the second is, whether nervous or other bodily 
processes are at each step of the conscious process its cause 
or absolutely determining condition. 

Interactionism admits both expressive or external, and 
initiative or internal freedom. Consciousness is able to pro- 
duce changes in bodily movement, it holds, and a fortiori 
will be able to affect its own course. As to whether this 
power of self-determination is to be understood in the deter- 
ministic or indeterministic sense, interactionism leaves an 
entirely open question. 

Automatism holds that the " materials of consciousness 
are the products of cerebral activity." The relation is that of 
one-sided dependence, without reciprocal influence. The 
pulses of thought follow one another like the sparks from an 
engine, each pulse being due, not to an influence from the 
previous pulse, but directly to some movement in brain 
molecules. Consciousness is thus doubly inefficient, unable 
even to affect its own course. Freedom in either sense is 
excluded. 

Parallelism, an intermediate doctrine, would explicitly 
deny any direct influence of mind upon the course of phys- 
ical events. Whether it would admit any power of initiative, 
or spontaneity — any freedom from the trammels of mechan- 
ical law — would depend upon the extent of the parallelism 
and upon its ultimate critical interpretation. If there are 
some psychical processes, as Wundt and Ziehen hold, for 
which no physical correlate can be found, then to this extent 
the psychical series is independent of the chain of physical 
causation, and spontaneity in some limited degree may be 



I4 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [144 

admitted. Again, if the parallelism is finally resolved into a 
semblance, we have a theory resembling interactionism in 
admitting for consciousness a certain power of control over 
its own processes (initiative freedom), and an efficient in- 
fluence over the other elements of real being (expressive 
freedom). Parallelism, then, in its immediate bearing upon 
the question of freedom in these two senses, is more or 
less non-committal and plastic. In fact, as we shall no- 
tice, the ambiguity of parallelism at this point may be urged 
against its acceptance as an ultimate theory. 

As to a libertarian freedom of choice over and above the 
spotaneity or initiative freedom we have noticed, and sup- 
posed to be distinguishable from it, it is enough here to 
remark that its possibility is denied by automatism and by 
parallelism in its usual form, and is admitted by interaction- 
ism; while direct arguments in its favor must, of course, be 
found outside the range of psychophysical discussion. 
Whether it is compatible with any form of parallelism re- 
mains to be considered. 

A. Automatism 

The motto of automatism is that thought is the function 
of the brain, or conversely, that the brain is the organ of 
mind. The new sciences of physiological and experimental 
psychology have strongly emphasized the dependence of 
mind upon the nervous system, and there is no doubt that 
until very recent years the currents of psychology have set 
strongly in the automatist direction. 

The automatist's motto is supported by many undoubted 
facts. It has been shown that many of the simpler mental 
processes are connected with definite portions of the brain 
cortex, and that diseased brain-tissue causes an impairment 
of the mental power. In numberless cases of insanity post 
mortem examination has shown a tumor in the brain, or 



145] THE PSYCHOPHYSICAL QUESTION j§ 

some abnormality of brain structure. Physical fatigue 
dulls the mental powers, and narcotics introduced into the 
brain change the whole character of the mental life. 
During sound sleep and in the trance state, to say nothing 
of the condition before birth and after death, conscious- 
ness seems to be wholly intermitted, while its physical con- 
comitant enjoys an unbroken continuity. Automatism again 
does away with the inconvenient interference of mind in 
the movements of matter, and so far harmonizes with the 
complete mechanical explanation of movement for which 
physical science seeks. Alike in the history of the individual 
and of the race, the development of mind seems dependent 
upon that of the body. As in evolution, the inorganic conies 
before the organic, and in ontogenesis the developed brain 
comes before consciousness, the law of parsimony leads us to 
refer the origin of consciousness to the material particles 
organized in the form of brain-cells, and its processes to 
molecular movement in the brain. Thus, in its origin and 
history, and, it would seem, in its destiny, the conscious life 
is inextricably bound up with matter and its laws. If the self 
is but a phase of a complicated arrangement of highly 
evolved matter, the belief in its substantiality, its moral free- 
dom, or its continued existence seems manifestly absurd. 

The eclipse of spiritual belief with which philosophy was 
threatened by the automatist doctrine was fully appreciated 
by Mr. Huxley, its leading champion, and was thus ex- 
pressed in a classical passage: 1 

" The consciousness of this great truth [that the physiol- 
ogy of the future would extend the realm of matter and law 
over the mental sphere] weighs like a nightmare, I believe, 
upon many of the best minds of these days. They watch 
what they conceive to be the progress of materialism, in such 
fear and powerless anger as a savage feels, when, during an 

1 "The Physical Basis of Life," Fortnightly Review, Feb., 1869. 



: 6 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM | 146 

eclipse, a great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The 
advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls ; 
the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom ; they are 
alarmed lest man's moral nature be debased by the increase 
of his wisdom." 

Mr. Huxley, as is well known, escapes from the consequences 
of a materialism which, as he says, " may paralyze the ener- 
gies and destroy the beauty of a life," by covering the mate- 
rialistic features of his theory with the modest veil of agnos- 
ticism. If we know matter as it really is, and further, can 
perceive in cause and effect, not simply a sequence, but a 
necessary sequence, he sees no escape from utter materialism 
and necessarianism. But, he asks, " after all, what do we 
know of this terrible ' matter,' except as a name of the un- 
known and hypothetical cause of states of our own con- 
sciousness?" This modest disavowal of knowledge of what 
the brain really is, is not, however, in itself enough to assure 
us of the efficiency of mind. If the relation of thought, as we 
know it, to brain, as we know it, is always that of one-sided 
dependence, agnosticism alone will not suffice to dispel the 
fatalistic inference. We are not surprised that Mr. Huxley 
himself felt impelled, doubtless by the advancing tide of 
matter, to qualify the declaration of his original address that 
" our volition counts for something, as a condition of the 
course of events," 1 by the insertion some twenty years later 
of the foot-note " or to speak more accurately, the physical 
state of which our volition is the expression." 2 

Against the automatist's argument in favor of a one-sided 
dependence of thought upon the brain, and its fatalistic 
corollaries, may be urged objections from the standpoint of 
common sense, of morality, and of scientific generalization. 

1 Fortnightly Review, 1869, p. 145. 

2 Collected Essays, 1892, vol. i, p. 163, note. See Ward, Naturalism and Ag- 
nosticism, vol. ii, p. 54. 



!47] THE PSYCHOPHYSICAL QUESTION ij 

That such a dependence exists at least in the case of sensa 
tion, is shown by Mr. Huxley's familiar experiment of prick- 
ing one's self with a pin. 1 The pin-prick evidently precedes 
the pain, and, by a simple application of Mill's " method of 
difference," is shown to be the cause of the pain. A similar 
dependence of mental process upon nervous process is de- 
clared (contrary to popular impression) to hold in the case 
of emotion and volition. Interactionism replies that the pin- 
prick experiment proves, if it proves anything, that there is 
not one-sided dependence, but reciprocal action between 
mind and brain. The same reasoning exactly, which shows 
that the pin-prick is the cause of the sensation, will prove 
that the volition to make the experiment is the cause of the 
movement of the hand and arm which follows. It is, of 
course, impossible at preseut to show that the volitional 
brain-movement follows the volition, but it is equally impos- 
sible to show the excitement of the sensational brain-centre 
precedes the pain. 

The "dynamic quality of ideas" as shown in the hypnotic 
suggestion weighs against automatism. The idea of a burn 
suggested to the hypnotic subject is followed by a real scari- 
fication of the tissues, and the result, mysterious at best, be- 
comes wholly unaccountable if we exclude as efficient factors 
both the thought of the hypnotist and that of the subject. 

The antinomy between automatism and morality may be il- 
lustrated from Mr. Huxley's Romanes Lecture. In an utterance 
which has given aid and comfort to the enemies of natural- 
ism he intimated that the " cosmic process " " has no sort of 
relation to moral ends." " Let us understand, once for all, 
that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating 
the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in 
combatting it." 2 But moral sentiments, we must remember, 

1 See Collected Essays, vol. i, pp. 238-240. 
* Evolution and Ethics, p. 83. 



!g THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [ I4 8 

like all conscious processes, are the products of cerebral 
activity. The brain, then, though its movements are unques- 
tionably a part of the non-moral " cosmic process," generates 
a moral imperative which commands that the cosmic process 
be combatted. Apart from this difficulty in Mr. Huxley's 
system, it needs no argument to show that there is a contra- 
diction between the ethical principles which he so nobly 
advocates and the fatalistic inferences to which his automat- 
ism easily leads. 

The physiological postulate of automatism — thought is a 
function of the brain — is opposed not only by the common 
sense view of reciprocal influence, but by the leading gener- 
alizations of physics and biology. As regards the conservation 
of energy, Professor Hoffding clearly outlines the situation : 

" The supposition that a casual relation may exist between 
the mental and the material is contrary to the doctrine of 
the ' persistence of energy.' For at the point where the ma- 
terial nerve-process should be converted into mental activity, 
a sum of physical energy would disappear without the loss 
being made good by a corresponding sum of physical en- 
ergy 

" Of course, there is always one way of escape — to deny 
the doctrine of energy. This doctrine is not experimentally 
proved, and, as we have seen, cannot, strictly speaking, ever 
be proved. But according to the general rules of method- 
ology, we may not, in forming our hypotheses and judging 
of them when formed, enter into conflict with leading scien- 
tific principles. And in modern natural science the doc- 
trine of energy is such a leading principle. If, therefore, an 
hypothesis is in conflict with this doctrine, the fact tells at 
once decidedly against it." J 

To the argument indicated above, the automatist, so far as 
we know, has given no satisfactory answer. Automatism, sin- 

1 Outlines of Psychology, pp. 55 and 58. 



149] THE PSYCHOPHYSICAL QUESTION IO , 

gularly enough, finds in the mechanical view of the world one 
of its strongest opponents. It cannot hold its ground against 
parallelism (and has not done so), because parallelism pro- 
vides for the completeness and inviolability of the mechan- 
ism better than automatism. Further, it is not open to the 
automatist, as it is conceivably to the interactionist, to deny 
the universality of the law of conservation, or, with Spencer, 
to correlate mental with physical " energy," because this is 
to give up the mechanical principle upon which automatism 
is based. Another of the great generalizations of modern 
science, the doctrine of evolution, is, we shall find, unfriendly 
to automatism, but consideration of this point may conve- 
niently be postponed to another chapter. 

B. Parallelism 

Parallelism, as contrasted with automatism, has the advan- 
tage of keeping intact the doctrine of the conservation of en- 
ergy, of avoiding the difficulties of conceiving causal inter- 
course between matter and mind, and of providing, at least 
apparently, for a real activity and continuity of consciousness. 
As the conscious series goes along by itself, according to its 
own laws, and uninfluenced by the physical series, mind is 
seemingly endowed with spontaneity and efficiency, at least, 
within the sphere of its own movement. 

When we examine more closely, however, we see that the 
freedom possible under the theory in its usual form is a van- 
ishing quantity. In the first place, mind can have no influ- 
ence over bodily action ; all the deeds done in the body are 
determined by physical antecedents, governed strictly by 
physical law. The purpose of the statesman, the benevolence 
of the philanthropist, the hatred of the murderer, the ideal of 
the artist, cannot, strictly speaking, have the slightest influence 
upon the expression of these mental phenomena in the 
material world. And, secondly, even in the closed circle of 



20 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [jjq 

thought-life there seems no room for any real spontaneity. 
From the standpoint of brain-movement the conscious pro- 
cess at each step takes its cue from the concomitant cortical 
process, and as the cortical process is controlled wholly by 
mechanical law, parallelism in this view, equally with au- 
tomatism, reduces consciousness to the position of a boat 
floating " oarless and rudderless " upon the stream of phys- 
ical change. It becomes simply a passive spectator of its 
own processes, unable to influence its own course. The 
difficulties of parallelism as so construed lead many of its 
advocates (Ziehen, Wundt, Hoffding, Paulsen, Stout) to sub- 
ject it to further criticism, with the result that the physical 
series is ultimately dispensed with, and some form of " pan- 
psychism " or " critical monism " takes the place of the 
original parallelism. 

As so reconstructed, parallelism allows equally with inter- 
actionism for the power both of mental initiative and out- 
ward expression. Consciousness becomes the primary and 
determining factor, and is in interaction with those elements 
of real being which the physical series symbolizes. Em- 
phasis, we find, must inevitably be laid upon one or the other 
of the two parallels. If both have an equal footing in reality, 
we cannot rest in the thought that they are so bound together 
as to be in constant juxtaposition, and yet so held apart as 
to be totally inaccessible to each other's influence. We 
must go back to interactionism, or else we must give one 
series preference over the other. Ultimately, then, we find 
that but two species of parallelism are really held, material- 
istic or epiphenomenist parallelism, and idealistic parallelism. 
The first makes mind a property or subordinate aspect of 
matter, " a subjective phase of certain objective phenomena," 
and is opposed to freedom in any sense ; the second regards 
matter and mechanism as mental symbols of some extra- 
material and extra-mechanical reality, and leaves the way 
open for further discussion of the free-will problem. 



j 5 I ] THE PS YCH0PHYS1CAL Q VEST ION 2 I 

Overlooking the logical instability in the doctrine, let us 
look at it in its most general or unmodified form, and com- 
pare it in its advantages and defects with the rival theory of 
interaction. We shall consider briefly : I. What parallelism 
means. 2. The question of its extent. 3. Facts in its sup- 
port. 4. Objections to it. 

1. When it is said that changes in the content of con- 
sciousness and changes in nervous or brain tissue are " par- 
allel," the assertion must mean (a) that there are features in 
each series of events which exactly correspond to features in 
the other series, and (b) that correponding events in the 
two series occur simultaneously. 

So far as the parallelism extends (a question to be after- 
ward noticed) a definite change in consciousness must have 
a definite change in nervous tissue corresponding to it and 
vice versa. To the mental changes m x m 2 m z , the bodily 
changes b t b 2 b 3 , must exactly correspond. 



B 3 

h h ;"* *>"" : b i 

If at any point in the mental series m 3 , the corresponding 
physical movement may be indifferently b 3 or B 3 (see dia- 
gram), the parallelism is broken. For if two different physi- 
cal events, b$ and B 3 , may indifferently be parallel with m 3 , 
why not a dozen? or to reverse the question, why to a given 
physical event b 3 , may not two or more mental events corre- 
spond? If two objects move always in parallel lines (to refer 
to our mathematical metaphor), the direction in which one 
moves determines absolutely the direction in which the other 
must move. In other words, so far as parallelism between 
brain-movement and thought extends, a competent interpre- 



2 2 THE FREE- WILL PR OBLEM [ r 5 2 

ter observing either series, could translate it with absolute 
accuracy into terms of the other series. 

In time the relation between corresponding events in the 
two series must be that of exact simultaneity. Let us sup- 
pose that the mental state of an angry man about to strike a 
blow is analyzable at a given instant, into sensational, emo- 
tional and volitional elements, and that the complex state has 
an equally complex correlate in the nervous series. Plainly 
the total physical event, said to be parallel with the mental 
event, must be precisely simultaneous with it. If the sensa- 
tional element of the total mental state follows its correlative 
brain-movement, while the volitional element of the mental 
complex precedes its brain-correlate, the two series do not 
proceed pari passu. The relation between them would be 
similar to that which exists between the tempo" of a circus 
band and the movements of the waltzing elephant. Again, 
if conscious changes always follow, by an interval however 
small, the corresponding brain-changes, the state of the case 
cannot properly be called parallelism ; for the term then will 
mean the same as automatism, from which it was supposed to 
be distinguished. If parallelism is to take rank as a separate 
theory, it must always connote a definite correspondence, 
and an exact simultaneity between the parallel series. 1 

2. The extent to which consciousness and physical phe- 
nomena may be said to be parallel, is a question which con- 
cerns primarily the relation between conscious processes and 
processes in the cortex, or gray matter, of the brain. But 
even here there maybe processes on both sides which find no 
concomitant on the other. Ziehen holds that there are 
" numberless material processes of the cortex, which take 

1 Professor C. A. Strong remarks ( Why the Mind Has a Body, p. 159) : " If 
the interactionist would but admit the simultaneity of the pairs of events, thepar- 
allelist would have him at his mercy; but if he persists in holding them to be 
successive, I do not see how the issue can be decided by any means known to nat- 
ural science." 



1 5 3 ] THE ps YCHOPH YSICAL Q UESTION 2 3 

place without' the concomitance of psychical processes." On 
the other hand, he finds nothing in the brain-process corres- 
ponding to the perception of time and space relations. 1 
Wundt holds that all organic (including brain) processes have 
a conscious concomitant, but exempts from the law of 
physical concomitance, " the more complicated products of 
our mental life," and " the general intellectual powers which 
are the necessary pre-supposition of those products." 2 
Stout ultimately holds to a complete parallelism on both 
sides. Every mental and every physical event finds its con- 
comitant in the other series. 3 

Reflection will show that a thorogoing parallelism com- 
plete on both sides is the only one which can keep unim- 
paired the law of conservation, and really exclude mutual 
influence. Assuming that there are physical events with no 
conscious correlate, the change in this region may set up 
change in the region paralleled by consciousness, and so 
initiate a change in the conscious series. But the conscious 
change thus begun, having nothing in the previous conscious 
series to explain it, will either be uncaused (thus denying 
the causal law), or must be referred to the influence of the 
physical changes, thus returning to the difficulty of interac- 
action. On the other hand, imagine a philosopher to be 
so absorbed in speculation about the stars that he walks 
unwittingly into a well. Here the higher intellectual 
operations, which we now assume to have no physi- 
cal correlate, affect the ordinary sensory-motor consciou- 
ness, and so by hypothesis affect the character of the 
concomitant molecular movements in the brain. In this 
case the nature of brain-activity — if not the amount, at least 
the direction of motion — is due ultimately to an event which 

1 Introduction to Physiological Psychology, pp. 275, 277. 

2 Human and Animal Psychology, p. 447. 

3 Manual of Psychology, p. 52. 



2 4 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [^4 

was exclusively mental, and the law of conservation is as 
much endangered by the incompleteness of the parallelism 
as it would be by an avowed interactionism. 

If we are to safeguard the law of the conservation of en- 
ergy, in the interests of which the parallelist theory has been 
adopted, we must assume that every event in the physical 
world finds its correlate in the mental world, and vice versa. 
There must be a conscious concomitant of the " concentrat- 
ing nebulae " as well as a physical correlate of the " thoughts 
of poets." Many parallelists shrink from taking up the bur- 
den of metaphysical assumption thus demanded, but if they 
are in earnest about the law of conservation, it is difficult to 
see how the burden can be avoided. 

3. Parallelism claims to find a double support in the facts 
of physiology and physics. For the proof of the concomit- 
ance of nervous and conscious processes it goes to physi- 
ology p and for the proof of their " hermetic closure," as 
regards causal influence, to physics. Strictly speaking, par- 
allelism is lacking in any direct empirical support. Science 
has shown with increasing clearness and certainty the intimacy 
of the connection between mind and brain, but has not yet 
disclosed the nature of that connection. Modern neurology 
and comparative physiology do not of themselves suggest 
the parallelisms interpretation, but have supplied a number 
of facts, both in broader outline and in minute detail, which 
may be conveniently viewed through parallelisms glasses, 
and used to support one side of the parallelisms contention 
— the invariable concomitance of mental and physical action. 
For the other side — mutual .inaccessibility — the disparity of 
the two sets of phenomena and, in particular, the law of the 
conservation of energy, are invoked. Parallelism, of course, 
finds negative support in the difficulties of the other theo- 
ries. The advantages claimed for it are that it takes account 
of the facts of physiology and does full justice to the gene- 



! 5 5 1 THE PS YCHOPHYSICAL Q UESTION 2 5 

ralization of physics, avoiding the logical difficulty of con- 
necting disparate phenomena, and that it is of great practi- 
cal convenience as a working hypothesis. 

4. Over against these advantages are some objections 
which may be briefly noted. 

( 1 ) There is a difficulty from which parallelism and inter 
actionism alike suffer, growing out of the inaccessibility to 
observation of brain-action. There is no empirical proof 
that all movements in the brain are due to mechanical 
causes, nor is there evidence that all psychical events have 
exact physical correlates. Analogy from the principle of 
the " summation of stimuli," before a conscious effect is 
produced, suggests the possibility of mental processes so 
faint as to be without brain-influence. Again, the complex- 
ity both of the mental processes and of brain activity forbid 
at present the coordination of the two with any degree of 
exactness. An ideal empirical proof of parallelism would 
consist in a complete analysis of a complex mental state and 
the exhibition of corresponding features in the complex of 
associated molecular brain-movement — an almost hopeless 
task to an observer to whose view both the cerebral process 
and the mental process were completely open. But, at 
present, it must be acknowledged, we do not know what takes 
place within the brain. That there is always some activity 
of the brain in some relation to consciousness is the common 
opinion of all schools, but we do not know in exactly what 
part of the brain, if not all, this related activity occurs, nor, 
in the appropriate part or parts, do we know in what pre- 
cisely the activity consists. This is an objection to the 
provability of parallelism, rather than to its truth. 

(2) Some facts of brain-physiology tend at least to 
disprove the parallelist assumption. A thorogoing local- 
ization of brain-functions, while consistent with other theo- 
ries, would be favorable to parallelism. Some of the freaks 



2 6 THE FREE- WILL PR OBLEM [ j 5 g 

of memory favor the view that each word, or even letter, has 
its exact pigeon-hole in some brain-cell, and the capacity to 
reproduce words by speech or writing is found to be de- 
stroyed by lesions in definite areas of the cortex. Motor 
centers, also, have been mapped out with much definiteness 
in the case of animals, and approximately in the case of man. 
When we come to the higher intellectual functions, how- 
ever, we are left more in doubt. Many physiologists here 
deny localization altogether, holding that the entire hemi- 
sphere is active. Some (the phrenological school) locate the 
intellectual functions in the frontal lobes, others (Carpenter, 
Bastian, Hughlings Jackson 1 ) in the posterior lobes. Says 
Professor Loeb : " Experiments on the brain indicate that 
while there exists to a certain extent an anatomical localiza- 
tion in the cortex, the assumption of a psychical localization 
is contradicted by the facts 

" This agrees [referring to the experiments of Goltz on 
dogs] with the idea that in the processes of association the 
cerebral hemispheres act as a whole, and not as a mosaic of 
a number of independent parts." 2 

We are then unable to say with certainty how extensive is 
the brain-activity assumed to accompany a given thought, or 
in what part of the brain it is located. Sir M. Foster, speak- 
ing of the phenomena shown by animals with parts of the 
brain removed, says "we cannot fix on any linear barrier in 
the brain or general nervous system, and say ' beyond this 
there is volition and intelligence, but up to this there is 
none.' " 3 The failure of localization would leave us in the 
dark as to the nervous concomitants, say, of love and hate, 
and in the present state of physiological doctrine we should 

1 Hollander : Mental Functions of the Brain, p. 24. 
1 Comparative Physiology of the Brain, p. 262. 
8 Text-Book of Physiology, 1S97, p. 1081. 



I 57 1 THE PS YCHOPH YSICAL QUES TION 2 7 

be shut up to crude speculation of the " right-hand-spiral- 
motion " and " left-hand-spiral-motion " order. 

The phenomena of psychical supply {suppleance) or "vi- 
carious functioning" are certainly a stumbling-block to par- 
allelism. As in a factory where division of labor exists, one 
skilled laborer may, on occasion, take the place of another, 
so, within limits, the functions of lost parts of the brain are 
gradually assumed by others. Here the conscious activity, 
when regained — the sensation or motor impulse — is essen- 
tially the same as before, while the associated brain-move- 
ment is entirely different ; and this is true whether the orig- 
inal brain-correlate was definitely localized, or was a coor- 
dinated activity of the entire cortex. We have to conclude 
that a given conscious process can take place equally well 
with either of two essentially different physical concomitants, 
thus doing away with the exact correspondence which paral- 
lelism demands. 

(3) When we compare the two sets of phenomena and 
observe their difference, it is as hard to believe in exact cor- 
respondence between the two as in their causal interaction. 
The subjective accentuation of rhythm, while possibly capa- 
ble of a physical explanation, may be a case in point. " The 
very time-rhythm of psychical processes does not imme- 
diately follow the nervous processes, even when these are 
rhythmic, as in the case of reflexes." x The arrangement of 
our sense-perceptions under the forms of time and space, 
the logical activities of comparison and inference, and the 
" synthetic unity of apperception " are mental operations for 
which a proper physical correlate is difficult to conceive. 
One series is subject to quantitative measurement, and its 
energy is constant in amount. The other has no exact 
quantitative character, but, so far as quantitative terms may 
be applied to it, its knowledge may grow from more to 

1 Rhiel : Science and Metabhysics, p. 186. 



2 8 THE FREE- WILL PR OBLEM [ j 5 g 

more, and its progress in morality be indefinitely advanced. 
The suspense and delay of deliberation, the power of 
postponing reaction to stimulus, is contrary to all that 
we know of purely physical or automatic action. The 
interval which separates stimulus and reaction, where delib- 
eration intervenes, is inexplicable on the theory that the 
brain has a purely automatic action, " uninfluenced by states 
of consciousness." The great difference, in short, between 
the two associated processes is that one is mechanical, the 
other teleological, and the task of parallelism is to show how 
the two processes, while so different that they cannot inter- 
act, are yet so much alike that one can be perfectly corre- 
lated with the other. Certainly the differences mentioned 
weigh as heavily against a theory of exact concomitance as 
against one of interaction. 

(4) Both series fall into discontinuity when mutual influ- 
ence is denied. Whence comes the sensation of light ? 
Not from the sun or the electric current, according to paral- 
lelism, for these physical phenomena do not influence the 
world of consciousness. Not from anything that we knew 
of in the previous state of consciousness, for of the coming 
sensation we often have no premonition. The obvious ex- 
planation is denied us, and we are compelled to suppose, 
" that it is not the physical stimulus which occasions 
the sensation, but that this latter arises from some 
elementary psychical processes, lying below the limen of 
consciousness." x Even so we are left in doubt whether 
these hypothetical " elementary processes " belong to the 
individual consciousness, or to the consciousness-in-general 
which is supposed to parallel the world of organic or phys- 
ical movement. 

A similar gap is left upon the physical side when mental 
influence is denied. Paley's illustration of the watch may be 
1 Wundt: Human and Animal Psychology, p. 450. 



159] THE PSYCHOPHYSICAL QUESTION 29 

antiquated as an argument for design in nature, but it is 
hard to believe that the purpose of the designer had no 
effect in the production of the watch itself. If " the brain 
has an automatic action uninfluenced by states of conscious- 
ness," the purpose of the engineer had no direct influence 
upon the construction and form, for example, of the Brook- 
lyn Bridge. We must substitute in this case the causality of 
certain elaborate brain-processes which accompanied the 
engineer's planning and calculation. But the correspond- 
ence between the mental purpose and its realization in the 
completed structure is so exact and impressive that the 
efficiency of the former must in some sense, be admitted. 
The bridge as it stands shows purpose unmistakably. It 
cannot be the result of a " fortuitous concourse " of mate- 
rials. If efficiency be denied in the case of the engineer's 
purpose, then mental efficiency must be brought in further 
up the stream, and the exact correspondence between en- 
gineer's purpose and material bridge must be due to a har- 
mony pre-established by cosmic intelligence. " If the con- 
comitance of cortical and conscious processes is regarded as 
an ultimate principle, it is simply a miracle." z 

Sober parallelists do not assert that either process would 
go along by itself if unaccompanied by the other. 

a) ~ { b} — { c } 

ABC, the physical series. 
a b c, the conscious series. 

In the accompanying diagram, the physical term A would 
not be followed by B, unless A had its psychical concomit- 
ant a. A alone then would not produce B, while Aa would 
do so. How then can a be excluded from causal influence? 
It is an indispensable antecedent of B, an essential condition, 

1 Stout, op, cit., p. 51. 



30 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM \\6o 

and we have as little right to exclude it from causal efficiency 
as we have in case of the other condition A. It is not 
held, on the other hand, that in the search for a word or 
name, the psychical series could go along unaccompanied by 
physical concomitants. The conscious event b, the recalling 
of the word, occurs only if it is preceded by Aa, for if the 
appropriate cortical centre is extirpated memory is destroyed. 
How, again, we ask, can A, an essential and indispensable 
antecedent, be denied causal participation in the production 
of b? 1 For certain purposes the series ABC, or the series 
abc, might be treated as independent ; but in either case 
there would be yawning gaps to fill. 

It must be noticed, in passing, that the facts of intersub- 
jective intercourse become doubly mysterious on the prin- 
ciples of parallelism. The only known avenues of know- 
ledge and communication, through gesture, touch and sound, 
are by hypothesis barred at both ends. Instead, as a chan- 
nel of communication between different minds, is substituted 
a "system of immaterial agency," supposed to parallel the 
physical world. A piece of circular. reasoning seems to be 
involved in this assumption. The strongest, if not the sole, 
evidence we have for the existence of any such immaterial 
system is the belief in other minds. Yet we get at the 
other minds, in the way of knowledge and influence, 
through the medium of their bodies. 2 How, then, can 
the belief in other minds, so reached, be made the pre- 
mise of an argument for the existence of an immaterial sys- 
tem underlying the physical world as " thing in itself," and 
taking the place of the body as a link of intercourse and 
influence between minds? 

(5) The opponent of parallelism might stake his whole 

1 These remarks were suggested by Bradley's criticism of automatism. Appear- 
ance and Reality, pp. 327-329. 

2 So Bradley, op. ciL, p. 255. And see Ward, op. cit., Vol. II., p. 239. 



! 6 1 ] THE PS YCHOPHYSICAL Q U EST I ON 3 : 

case upon the bare fact of knowledge. Both the physical and 
the psychical series are equally objects of knowledge, other- 
wise there would be no question of the two parallels. But 
knowledge, however interpreted, involves an influential rela- 
tion between the knower and the thing known. According 
to natural realism, the world of perception is a real external 
world, which is the cause of the perception. If the physical 
world is purely phenomenal, the relation is reversed, and 
the world becomes the effect of mental activity. If behind 
physical phenomena there is an unknown x, or thing-in-itself, 
then this x is in interaction with mind in producing phe- 
nomena. If, finally, the* physical world (including brain 
and nerves) is nothing more' than " perceptions, actual or 
possible," as phenomenism asserts, then, corresponding to a 
perception in the mind of A, there would be no brain-event 
except a possible perception in the mind of a hypothetical 
anatomist B; and this perception, if it occurred, would not 
be simultaneous with A's perception, and, besides, there 
would be but one class of reality — mental. 

Parallelism is then reduced to this dilemma : Either the 
physical world, supposed to be parallel with mind, is only 
a fact of consciousness ; or, if outside of consciousness, it 
is either a real world directly known and so in influential re- 
lations with consciousness, or it is an unknowable thing-in- 
itself, also in influential relations with consciousness in the 
production of phenomena. In any case the parallelism of 
two mutually exclusive series vanishes. 

It is no wonder that a dualism of two series of events, at 
once in closest union and completest separation, is so unsta- 
ble that it dissolves at the touch of epistemological criti- 
cism. The difficulty, of course, arises from the attempt to 
coordinate or place in exact and detailed correspondence two 
disparate sets of facts, one to be construed under the cate- 
gory of mechanism, the other under that of teleology. One 



32 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM r x 6 2 

category or the other must ultimately control both series, 
and the outcome will be a belief in a one-sided dependence 
of mind upon matter (materialistic parallelism), or of mat- 
ter upon mind (idealistic parallelism). Historically a 
mechanical principle, that of the conservation of energy, 
has been given the preference by the framers of the 
parallelist hypothesis. The law of conservation must be in- 
violate in the physical sphere, and the laws of the conscious 
process must accommodate themselves to the requirements 
of an exact concomitance. On this rigid construction, par- 
allelism, for the purposes of our discussion, differs little from 
automatism. The mental life, looking always to the me- 
chanical series for the cue of its own activity, cannot be said 
to have any real spontaneity or real activity of its own. Con- 
sciousness is thus practically reduced to the position of 
" epiphenomenon," and if materialism be disavowed, we have 
the familiar puzzle of a phenomenal world known by its 
epiphenomenon or shadow. 

If stress be laid upon the mental side, and consciousness be 
endowed with a real power of control over its own processes, 
mechanical explanation of the physical series will inevitably 
be incomplete. If the mental life is not tied down to mechan- 
ical conditions, its spontaneity will inevitably infuse into both 
parallels an influence which is foreign to mechanical law. If 
the stream of consciousness goes along in accordance with 
laws of its own, then the physical concomitants take their 
exact form in virtue of their necessary correlation rather than 
because of purely physical conditions. The physical world 
is in some way plastic to conscious purpose, and provided 
that the mind can initiate its own action, the volition is a 
significant and essential condition of the physical change, 
for without it the precise physical movement would not 
have taken place. Bound to the wheel of mechanical causa- 
tion by the link of inevitable concomitance, consciousness 



!<53] THE PSYCHOPHYSICAL QUESTION 33 

can be prevented from controlling the mechanism only by be- 
ing itself rendered impotent. If it has no freedom of expres- 
sion, it has no freedom of initiation. If it is not a real cause 
in the physical world, it must be merely an effect of physical 
action. We conclude that to attempt to safeguard the inter- 
ests of the conservation of energy in the physical world, and 
at the same time to preserve for consciousness the power of 
controlling its own action, is on parallelist principles hope- 
less. If we exclude miraculous intervention, which is as 
hostile to an inviolable mechanism as is the influence of hu- 
man purpose, parallelism is confronted with the alternatives : 
either mind is not wholly dependent upon brain-movement, 
with the corollary that mind does influence brain-movement; 
or if it has no influence over brain-movement, it has no con- 
trol over its own states. 

Many popular expositions of parallelism seek to do justice 
to the claims both of mechanism and of mental prerogative 
by first arranging the facts in two coordinate and mutually 
exclusive series, and then reducing the parallelism to a sem- 
blance by showing that the physical series has only a 
phenomenal or symbolic, that is mental, reality. The theory 
is thus thought to be freed from its fatalistic tendencies. 
The mind, in this reconstruction, is released from the tram- 
mels of the mechanism with which it had been coordinated, 
and recovers both its power of self-activity and its power of 
free interaction with the elements of real being, of which the 
physical world is but the phenomenal symbol. 

This solution is attractive, but it is doubtful if fatalistic 
corollaries are thus wholly avoided. The mere fact that the 
life of thought and volition can be thus exactly correlated 
with mechanical action will favor a determinism of the me- 
chanical sort in spite of the idealistic interpretation of the 
mechanism. But the main question here is whether the char- 
acter of mental and physical action is such that this exact cor- 



3 4 THE FREE- WILL PR OBLEM [ t 64 

relation is possible. If two courses are open to the volitional 
process, as libertarianism holds, then the placing of the pro- 
cess in relation of exact correspondence, point for point, with 
a nervous process by hypothesis " unideterministic" is im- 
possible. We have tried to show that if mental activity is, in 
the strict sense, to proceed pari passu, with purely mechani- 
cal movement, not only freedom in the libertarian sense, but 
any real spontaneity or power of mental initiative must be 
denied. If pure mechanism is the law of either series, it 
must control the entire psychophysical process. 

It seems also a fair criticism that the idealistic reduction 
of parallelism, in the interests of mental efficiency, involves 
an undue shifting of metaphysical standpoints. The brain is 
first not only treated as an entity, but credited with certain 
varieties of movement which, we believe, there is no empiri- 
cal evidence that it possesses, and some evidence that it 
does not or even cannot possess, in order to fit it to parallel 
completely every process and every detail of every process 
of the conscious life; and then, presto! it is reduced to a 
mere possibility of perception, with only a hypothetical or 
symbolical existence. If the parallelism so carefully made out 
and so elaborately buttressed on both sides with metaphys- 
ical assumption is finally to be reduced to a semblance, would 
it not be better to disclaim dualism at the outset, and confess 
that the whole question lapses? 

C. Interactionism 

To have scientific standing, interactionism must show (1) 
that conscious processes may be construed in terms of en- 
ergy, and so correlated with physical energy as to be in- 
cluded within the general law of the correlation of forces ; J or 
(2) that interaction is not inconsistent with the principle of 

1 So Spencer {First Principle;, pp. 225-226) and the Energetiker in Germany. 
See ITibben, "The Theory of Energetics, etc., Monist, vol xii, no. 3. 



!65] THE PSYCHOPHYSICAL QUESTION 35 

conservation 1 ; or (3) that this principle is so limited as to 
be inapplicable at the point of supposed interaction. Of 
these forms of interaction the last seems most easily defen- 
sible. It does not with ( 1 ) assume a relation of equivalence 
between incommensurable phenomena, nor with (2) attempt 
the apparently hopeless task of reducing something to noth- 
ing. The doctrine of conservation was intended originally 
to be a formula to express the correlation or equivalence of 
physical forces — for example, that a given amount of work 
done would generate an exactly equivalent amount of heat, and 
that this heat, under suitable conditions, could be changed 
back again into an exactly equivalent amount of mechanical 
energy. That the amount of physical energy in the world 
remains constant is an empirical generalization from these 
facts ; it is not by any means an a priori truth, nor was it in- 
tended to settle the problem of the relation of mind and 
matter. In fact, it has left the problem much where it found 
it. The doctrine of energy simply brings up in a special form 
the fundamental question of the causal relation between mind 
and body. Descartes' difficulty was with the quantity of 
motion. He thought that the soul could not generate nor 
retard motion, but simply change its direction ; and it is in- 
structive to remember that the theories of interactionism, 
occasionalism, one-substance-with-parallel- attributes, and 
pre-established harmony, were thrashed over in philosophy 
before the energy-conservation doctrine was formulated. If 
one holds a priori that mind cannot act on matter, nor mat- 
ter on mind, the scientific principle in question will not prove 
that to himself or others, although it will enable him, it must 
be admitted, to express his belief in a more impressive man- 
ner. It is the notion of interaction itself, not the law of con- 
servation, which makes the trouble. The fundamental prob- 

1 For proposed methods of conciliation, see Couailhac, La Libert'e et la Con- 
servation de VEnergie. Paris, 1897. 



2 6 THE FREE- WILL PR OBLEM [j gg 

lem for the interactionist is, How can mind and body act and 
react on each other ? and not, How can such interaction be 
reconciled with the conservation of energy ? 

To the objection that we cannot conceive how conscious- 
ness can push or pull atoms, we may reply ad hominem that 
we cannot conceive how any transeunt action takes place. 
Still it must be conceded that the case in point presents 
peculiar difficulties. Quantitative relations exist among the 
correlated physical forces, but this does not exclude causalty 
from regions where quantitative relations are inapplicable. 
Causal relations may exist between elements of the mental 
process, or between two minds, or between stimulus and sen- 
sation, where no quantitative proportionality can with exact- 
ness be ascertained. Again, the conviction that friction was 
the cause of heat was just as firm before the" numerical 
correlation of cause and effect was established, as after. 1 

A more effective reply might be that the difficulty of ad- 
mitting interaction is less than the difficulty of denying it ; in 
short, that parallelism makes more difficulties than it 
removes. This is the point to which our remarks have been 
directed. We may believe that body acts upon soul, and 
conversely, that 

" — of the soul the body form doth take, 
For soul is form, and doth the body make," 

even though we cannot picture to ourselves the mode of 
reciprocal action. That the inconceivability of the mode does 
not apply to the fact of such action, is shown by the common 
opinion of mankind, including philosophers in their un- 
guarded moments, and by the working hypothesis, for exam- 
ple, of physicists and experimental psychologists, when inves- 
tigating the relation between atmospheric waves and sound. 

1 See Sigwart : Logic (E. T.), vol. ii, p. 385. 



j 6 7 ] THE ps YCHOPHYSICAL Q UES TION 3 7 

The causal principle is essentially synthetic. It is used to 
unify the facts of our experience ; and the arbitrary diremp- 
tion of the two parts of the world of experience, even in 
the name of the causal principle, cannot logically be justified, 
and is a thought in which the mind cannot permanently 
rest. The relation between stimulus and pain, or between 
volition and movement answers Hume's requirement of inva- 
riable antecedence, and the causal connection may be estab- 
lished by Mill's canons of induction. That one link in the 
chain, the brain-movement, is inaccessible to observation, is 
not enough to invalidate the causal inference. If the essence 
of causation be regarded as real agency or efficient action, 
then surely in our experience of voluntary movement, we 
gain the clearest knowledge of such agency. Our very con- 
ception of physical energy seems derivable from our experi- 
ence of acting and being acted upon, and if causal agency or 
efficiency be here denied, it should, in consistency, be ex- 
cluded from the world altogether. Interactionism, it maybe 
claimed, does not make void the law of causation ; it rather 
establishes the law. 

We may continue to believe as before that, when we form 
plans and purposes, and then, after what we call an effort of 
will, find them realized in the movements of our bodies and 
in the physical world, the purpose and its realization are 
causally related. In our examination of psychophysical theo- 
ries, we have found no sufficient reasons for giving up the 
conviction that we have power on ourselves and on the 
world. For the interpretation of this conviction we must 
look, of course, to psychology proper, to ethics and meta- 
physics. 



II 



FREE-WILL AND EVOLUTION 1 

Two recent books of somewhat similar title illustrate two 
different views which may be taken as to the relation of evo- 
lution to the free-will problem. The author of the Riddle of 
the Universe, 12 declares that the superstition of free-will, to- 
gether with belief in the two other " buttresses of mysticism," 
God and immortality, has been shattered by the doctrine of 
evolution ; while the author of Guesses at the Riddle of 
Existence,* declares that "the deduction," from evolution to 
the negation of free-will, " supposing it logical, would be 
fatal surely, not to free-will, but to evolution." 

The general process of evolution as a process of change 
or progress, covering both natural and human history, may 
be regarded, according to the standpoint from which the 
process is viewed, as pointing to and culminating in the pro- 
duction of a free moral personality, or as making the per- 
son a purely natural product, devoid of any permanence or 
other prerogative which would raise him above nature. 
If we start from homogeneous matter, or primordial living 
germs, and emphasize the law of continuous development, 
the ascription to man of powers which raise him above the 
course of nature will seem to be excluded. The tendency of 
our thinking will obviously be towards mechanical deter- 
minism. 

1 A fuller examination of the general theory of evolution has been attempted 
in an article in the Princeton Theological Review, July, 1903. 

2 Haeckel. See p. 92. 

3 Goldwin Smith. See p. 210. 

38 [168 



1 6 9 ] FREE- WILL AND E VOL UTION 3 g 

If, on the other hand, we lay stress on the law of progress, 
the change from lower to higher forms of life, we may find 
in the evolutionary process much that favors a belief in free- 
dom. ' Evolution involves/ so the indeterminist might 
argue, ' a continuous change from simpler to more complex 
forms, from lower to higher potencies of life. There is the 
change in time from the inorganic to the organic, from the 
unconscious to the conscious, from the non-moral to the 
moral. In each case the lower sphere is both transcended 
by the higher and incorporated in it. May it not be that 
the realm of mechanical necessity is transcended by the 
realm of freedom ? In fact, is not such a transcendence 
what the whole course of development tends to suggest ? 

'The plant overcomes the mechanical law of gravitation as 
it turns toward the light. The amoeba detaches itself from 
its environment and has a certain power of movement. The 
spider weaves its web, the ants move and mold inorganic mat- 
ter in building their nests. Higher animals, as the beaver, 
make more striking changes in their environment. Finally, 
man, " the lord of creation," standing at the summit of or- 
ganic evolution, though he is partly subject to his environ- 
ment, and dependent upon it for life, yet shows an incalculable 
power to change it and mold it to his own uses. He exter- 
minates the larger animals who dispute his possession of the 
earth, or tames them to be his servants. He covers conti- 
nents with the products of his civilization, and changes the 
face of the earth. He wages warfare, more or less suc- 
cessful, upon the tendencies he has inherited from the brute, 
and struggles to 

" Move upward, working out the beast, 
And let the ape and tiger die." 

What shall we call the process thus sketched if it is not the 
evolution of freedom ?' 



40 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [ij 

It is quite apparent that our interpretation of evolution 
will depend upon the presuppositions which we bring to that 
interpretation. If inclined to believe that the mathematical- 
mechanical view of the world is the most fundamental, we 
may find in the evolutionary philosophy a powerful ally. 
On the other hand, if we believe, on psychological or ethical 
grounds, in the efficiency of mind and moral freedom, we 
may, as has been suggested, find much in the evolutionary 
process to support that belief. 

Three points in the evolutionary theory are of interest in 
relation to the free-will problem: I. the origin of conscious- 
ness; 2. the importance of the conscious factor in organic 
development; 3. the place of the genius or great man in 
social progress. 

Of these points the first two are concerned with the ques- 
tion between mechanical determinism and the personal the- 
ories of the will, rather than with the fine points of the dis- 
cussion between psychological determinism and indetermin- 
ism. The consideration of both may be brief, as they carry 
us back to the subject of our last chapter. If consciousness 
can be shown to have been derived from unconscious matter, 
automatism and mechanical determinism will be the natural 
inference, and evolution will furnish the necessarian with an 
effective weapon. On the other hand, if consciousness can 
be shown to be an efficient factor in organic development, to 
have " survival value," interactionism and expressive freedom 
at least will be favored. 

1. The attempt to derive the conscious from the uncon- 
scious is rather discredited in the thought of to-day. Added 
to the obvious logical difficulty is the objection to causal 
intercourse between the two spheres noticed in the last chap- 
ter. If we believe, with Tyndal, that " the passage from the 
physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of conscious- 
ness is unthinkable," even when brain-process and conscious 



1 7 1 ] FREE- WILL AND E VOL U TION 4 1 

process are both given, the difficulty of conceiving how such a 
transition took place in the first instance is, if possible, height- 
ened. It is one thing to say that brain-change can influence 
conscious processes — this the interactionist must admit; but 
it is quite another thing to say that physical movements 
can in the first instance produce or generate consciousness. 
The problem is to explain how any motion of thoughtless 
atoms, however complicated, can produce thought, or how 
any "integration of matter and dissipation of motion" can 
give rise to consciousness. Mind is an intruder in a world 
conceived in terms of matter, motion and force ; and the pro- 
duction of the conscious from the unconscious, of mind from 
matter, when these terms are used in their obvious meaning, 
is a logical generatio czquivoca. 

There are several possible ways out of this difficulty. The 
most obvious would be the materialistic solution, that con- 
ciousness is itself a mode of motion, a view that is not now in 
popular favor. Mr. Spencer's theory of " conscious energy" 
and its correlation with physical forces tends in this direc- 
tion, but he, of course, disavows the materialistic name and 
teaching. In recent statements of the evolution theory, there 
has been an attempt to give a more adequate account of the 
development of mental life. To say that evolution is true 
as a universal law, and therefore all the processes of mind 
are derived ultimately from the clash of atoms, is to ignore 
the fact, as Professor Baldwin remarks, that " mental facts 
are an important province for the establishment of general 
evolution." 1 The principle of continuity in development, 
moreover, is better satisfied by the assumption of conscious- 
ness in the lower forms of life, than by the logical feat of 
deriving it from the unconscious. 

"The problem of the origin of consciousness," says Mr. 

1 Senses and Intellect, p. 105. 



4 2 THE FREE- WILL PROBLEM [ 1 y 2 

F. W. Headley, " puts us on the horns of a dilemma. Either 
consciousness is present in the lowest forms of life or else it 
was introduced at a higher stage of development. The latter 
alternative is abhorrent to the very principle of evolution. 
We are driven, then, to believe that even the micro-organisms, 
whether animal or vegetable, have some consciousness, how- 
ever dim." 1 There is no doubt that this account of the evo- 
lution of mind has become more or less metaphysical. Con- 
sciousness is assumed where there is no evidence that it ex- 
isted, in order to account for consciousness when it actually 
appears. The logical gap is filled up by a metaphysical 
assumption. 

The appearance of mind may be coincident with the ap- 
pearance of life, 2 and then the question of the origin of mind 
is merged in the wider question of the origin of fife ; or con- 
sciousness may be regarded as an invariable aspect of all 
matter; or as the reality — " mind-stuff" — which matter sym- 
bolizes. Conceived in this rudimentary form, the word con- 
sciousness is somewhat "eviscerated" of its meaning, and 
may, in fact, approach infinitely near (though it never reaches) 
the limiting term " matter." The problem then becomes to 
trace the evolution from primitive " mind-stuff" to developed 
human consciousness, and is the same as that which meets 
us in all attempts to account for the higher in terms of the 
lower. The elements with which we started, and the finished 
product to be accounted for are often unconsciously assimil- 
ated, certain properties of the latter being transferred to the 
former. The homogeneous, although simply considered it 
would remain homogeneous, is endowed with instability to 
account for the diversity of things, and we have, as Dr. Ward 
says, "the philosophy of Heraclitus deduced from the prem- 

1 Problems of Evolution, p. 155. 

2 Romanes, Baldwin. See the latter's Alental Development, pp. 208-214. 



! 7 3 ] FREE- WILL AND E VOL V TION 4 3 

ises of Parmenides." z In the ancient form of evolution atoms 
were allowed a " swerving " movement, in order to account 
for free-will, and in a modern form " matter" is said to con- 
tain " the promise and potency of all terrestrial life," and is 
endowed with attributes of intelligence and almost of creative 
power. 

To examine closely the various theories of the origin and 
development of mind would carry us too far. It may, how- 
ever, be confidently urged that there is nothing in the scien- 
tific form of the evolution theory which compels us to limit 
the attributes of any order of being — say, the living or the 
conscious or the moral — to the predicates .which belong to a 
lower order of being. The very idea of a progressive devel- 
opment is in harmony with the poetic insight, that 

" Man hath all that nature hath, but more." 

Evolution is sometimes identified with a certain kind of mo- 
nistic philosophy which on a priori principles excludes free- 
will, or even real personality, from the universe. But evolu- 
tion, as most evolutionists will agree, is more than a mere 
continuous change, without order and without end. The 
process of which evolution takes account is a rational pro- 
cess and involves a real progress in the scale of being. Pro- 
gress, however, is an essentially teleological conception. It 
involves intelligence or purpose at both ends — an intelli- 
gence by which the progress is appreciated, and doubtless, 
also, unless the progress is purely subjective and illusory, a 
cosmic purpose of which progressive development is the ex- 
pression. It would be illogical to hold to a progressive ten- 
dency in development, and at the same time to deny in the 

1 Op. cit., vol. i., p. 245. Lotze (Metaphysics, § 227) says: " It is impossible to 
deduce difference from a single homogeneous principle, unless we have a group 
of minor premises to show why the one principle should necessarily develop a at 
one point, b or c at another." 



44 THE FREE- WILL PR OBLEM [ j 74 

name of evolution the power to form purposes and realize 
them in the world. There can be nothing antithetic between 
evolution and the prerogatives of personality, unless evolu- 
tion be regarded as not only a non-moral but an irrational 
process, without value and without aim. 

2. The place and function of mind in evolution is, at pres- 
ent, a vexed question both in biology and psychology. 
There is, as we have seen, the question as to the exact point 
in the process at which consciousness made its appearance; 
but, passing over this, the question remains as to what influ- 
ence, if any, it has exerted upon the development of the 
organism. Has it a " survival value" ? To the latter ques- 
tion, plainly, the interactionist will say "yes," and the au- 
tomatist will return a positive, and the parallelist a qualified, 
"no." 

In the automatist theory all states of consciousness, 
whether sensations, emotions or volitions, are alike the " pro- 
ducts of cerebral activity." When we experience what we 
call a volition, the movement of which we think this to be 
the cause, has already been started by the appropriate nerv- 
ous mechanism, and consciousness is powerless either to 
initiate or to inhibit organic movement. To the question of 
the origin of consciousness the automatist can have but one 
answer. Consciousness in the first instance, as in its devel- 
oped stages, is the direct result of a certain arrangement of 
molecules, and is " generated " by them. But why was con- 
sciousness evolved? The most obvious answer is — because 
it was useful to the organism. If it be replied that it was a 
chance variation, then the question becomes : Why was that 
variation perpetuated by natural selection? And the answer 
is the same as before. If not useful to the organism, con- 
sciousness, given its chance appearance, would, like the eyes 
of the fish in Mammoth Cave, have been atrophied or elimi- 
nated by natural selection, rather than preserved and devel- 



! j c 1 /#££. WILL AND E VOL UTION 45 

oped. That consciousness should be evolved out of the 
organism, say, when complicated reactions become necessary 
to its proper adjustment to environment, and yet have no 
selective function ; that it should be not only preserved by 
natural selection, but developed into instinct, deliberation^ 
far-seeing choice and intelligent purpose, and at the same 
time remain a useless appendage, powerless to affect either 
the organism or the environment, is more than we can 
believe, even on the authority of so good a biologist as Mr. 
Huxley. 

It may be confidently said that the victory on this point 
rests with the interactionist as against the automatist, and so 
far favors the influence of consciousness. It must be noticed, 
however, that parallelism is favored by an influential school 
of biologists. The prior question is of course as to the rela- 
tion between consciousness and movement in human expe- 
rience, and if causal influence here be denied, the denial 
must be extended to the entire realm of organic movement. 
Yet it must be noticed that biology presents some peculiar 
difficulties to the parallelist. Denying, on the one hand, 
that consciousness can be an evolved product of the uncon- 
scious, he is obliged to push back the origin of consciousness 
behind the point where there is empirical evidence that it 
exists ; and denying, on the other hand, that consciousness is 
an efficient factor in organic development, he is obliged to 
say that where it does exist, it does not influence survival. 
This paradox is illustrated in an interesting article by 
Professor Titchener, in which parallelism is defended 
from a biological standpoint. 1 Holding that we have 
evidence in the history of the individual of conscious move- 
ments becoming unconscious (as in learning to walk, etc.), 
but none of the reverse process, Professor Titchener draws 

1 " Were the Earliest Organic Movements Conscious or Unconscious?" Pop- 
ular Science Monthly, March, 1902. 



46 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [ f 76 

the general inference that all organic movements were in the 
first place attended with consciousness. He says: "The 
fact, then, if it be a fact, that ants and bees are nowadays 
mere reflex machines (as is held by many biologists), will 
mean that they have started out, so to say, with a certain 
endowment of mind, which they have lost in the process of 
adaptation to their special environment; and the similar fact 
that paramecium has its one stereotyped form of motor reac- 
tion to stimulus will mean that it, too, had at first its modi- 
cum of mind, which it has lost on its journey through the 
ages." z 

Surely the theory that a primitive consciousness is needed 
to explain organic movements, and that its continued use is 
necessary to prevent these movements from becoming " ste- 
reotyped," is a strange basis for the parallelistic conclusion 
that consciousness does nothing to further organic progress. 
It seems, on the contrary, to favor the interactionist's con- 
tention, as Professor Titchener himself formulates it, " that 
the function which is psychophysical helps the organism on- 
wards, on that account, more than the function which is 
physical; that consciousness, just because it is mental pro- 
cess, furthers life and progress." 2 

Into the discussions as to the original causes of variation 
and the inheritance of acquired characters, it will not be 
profitable for us to enter. We may remark simply that the 
essence of the Lamarckian theory is that consciousness is 
the cause of organic variation. " The production of a new 
organ in an animal body results from a new want arising and 
continuing to be felt, and from the new movement which 
this want initiates and sustains." 3 On the other hand, the 
extreme Darwinians, who do not, with Darwin himself, recog- 

1 Loc. cit., p. 465. 

2 Ibid., p. 459. The whole article should be read. 

3 Quoted by Ward, op. cit., vol. i, p. 273. 



-j j jl FREE- WILL AND E VOL UTION 47 

nize such conscious factors in evolution as sexual selection, 
deny that consciousness has a survival value. To the Dar- 
winians of this type, who hold that all variation is chance 
variation, the origin of the highly complex instinct of animals 
becomes a problem. On this point Professor H. W. Conn 
has lately said : " It is frankly admitted that to put the bur- 
den of explaining instincts upon natural selection alone, 
unaided by intelligence, is to lay upon it a load too heavy for 
it to carry. This is admitted even by those who feel that 
they cannot use the inheritance of acquired character to help 
them out of the difficulty." r 

The present state of biological discussion seems not unfa- 
vorable to interactionism. It may be said that the biological 
argument has had serious consequences for automatism ; 
that at present Neo-Darwinians tend strongly toward paral- 
lelism, and Lamarckians toward interactionism, and that the 
tendency of intermediate thinkers (if an opinion may be 
ventured) is toward larger recognition of the importance of 
a conscious factor in evolution. 

In general (to sum up the two points already noticed), we 
find that an evolutionary philosophy which traces all forms 
and potencies of life to forces resident within the primordial 
germ, or the primeval atoms, is favorable to a necessarian 
theory, which finds the conditions of voluntary activity ex- 
haustively contained in previous collocations of matter, or 
at least, in traits and tendencies which are handed down by 
heredity. On the other hand, in recent discussions of the 
evolution problem, three points, not unfavorable to a liberta- 
rian belief, are observable. The attempt to show that con- 
sciousness has been evolved from the unconscious is now gen- 
erally discredited ; the efficiency of consciousness as a factor 
in organic evolution is widely recognized ; and, it may be 
added, the gap between animal and human intelligence has 

1 The Method of Evolution, p. 275. 



48 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM \_17% 

been widened rather than filled by the recent studies of animal 
psychology. 1 Biology has not spoken the final word upon 
the free-will problem, but, as might have been expected, has 
left it to be decided on the evidence of psychological in- 
vestigation and moral conviction. 

3. In the application of evolutionary principles to the his- 
torical sphere, the question of the place and influence of the 
world's great men in social progress becomes important. If 
the powers and capacities of the great man are wholly de- 
rived from heredity and environment, he becomes a purely 
social product, with no power of initiative which can be 
regarded as his unique and personal possession. If, on the 
contrary, there is in the great man, as Professor Royce argues 
that there is in every individual, an element peculiarly his 
own, not to be accounted for by general laws, then the great 
man is a very real factor, and it may be a prime factor in 
social progress. The separable questions of the relation of 
the great man to his ancestors (heredity), and to his environ- 
ment, may be conveniently merged into the general question 
of his relation to his age. 

The genius can of course work only with the material 
which he finds ready to his hand. He must employ the lan- 
guage and methods of thought prevalent at his day, and can 
advance only a measurable distance beyond his contempora- 
ries, or like a captain too far in front of his company, he will 
lose touch with his comrades, and his work will remain with- 
out influence. The relation of the great man to his environ- 
ment is so close that it is possible at each step for the evolu- 
tionist to say to him: "What hast thou that thou didst not 
receive?" The greatness of a general does not consist in his 
independence of his army, but in his ability to use and direct 
his army. The hero-worshiper will give the credit of victory 

1 See, for example, E. L. Thorndike: "The Experimental Method of Studying 
Animal Intelligence." International Monthly, Feb., 1902. 



1 jg\ FMEE-WILL AND EVOLUTION 49 

to the genius and valor of the general ; the evolutional histo- 
rian to the state of military science, to favoring circumstances 
and to the collective qualities of the soldiery. As in all cases 
where the cause is complex, one element in it or another 
may be emphasized as the really important factor ; and it 
seems to be a question of taste whether we emphasize the 
individual contribution which the great man makes to pro- 
gress, or reduce it to a minimum. Mr. Spiller, for example, 
sees in Shakespeare a product of his time. " He only ac- 
cepted the torch which was handed him." 1 Again, " Shakes- 
peare's dramas, like his sonnets, are so largely indebted to 
his environment that, by comparison, his own contribution, 
a very real thing, shrinks into utter insignificance, a ripple on 
a mountainous wave." 1 ' Sir Oliver Lodge takes a quite dif- 
erent view. " What struggle for existence will explain the 
advent of a Beethoven? What pitiful necessity for earning 
a living as a dramatist will educe for us a Shakespeare." 3 
On one theory the great man is merely an evolved product ; 
on the other, an original moving force in social evolution. 

It may be shown that Shakespeare used the vocabulary, 
the poetical forms, the methods of dramatic construction, 
common to his contemporaries. " It is superfluous to men- 
tion that we do not owe the drama to him. Similarly, the 
blank verse which he employed he found ready-made," etc. 4 
But it is not in these points that originality is claimed. 
These are merely extemalia — form, not spirit. It is in the 
use which he made of the popular dramatic form that his 
claim to originality lies, and here the whole race of literary 
critics, Mr. Spiller complains, unite in the estimate of a late 
authority, Mr. Lee : " To Shakespeare the intellect of the 

1 The Mind of Man, p. 387. 2 p. 393. 

3 " The Reconciliation Between Science and Faith," Hibbert Journal, vol. i, 
no. 2. 

4 Op. cit., p. 388. 



tjO THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [\%0 

world, speaking in diverse accents, applies with one accord 
his own words : ' How noble in reason ! how infinite in 
faculty ! etc' " r To the literary critics the work of Shake- 
speare rises above that of his contemporaries as Mont Blanc 
above the other Alps ; to Mr. Spiller, as " a ripple on a 
mountainous wave." The question is plainly one to be de- 
cided by the canons of aesthetic appreciation, rather than by 
•the methods of exact science. That Shakespeare used in 
his work the forms of expression and the dramatic methods 
and historical material which were the common property of 
himself and his contemporaries, is surely no sufficient rea- 
son for transferring the credit for his work from himself to 
the account of his contemporaries, or to that of an imper- 
sonal Zeitgeist. 

The view referred to accounts for Shakespeare's work 
mainly through the influence of social environment. An- 
other way of discounting the personal factor would be to say 
that both the poet's endowments, and the use which he made 
of them, were wholly the gifts of his ancestry ; but what little 
is known of the Shakespeare family history would rob the 
view, in this case, of plausibility. The influence of heredity is 
the deterministic argument most commonly urged in the name 
of evolution. Can man, through the exercise of the will, 
overcome or modify the dispositions with which he was born, 
or is every thought and act controlled by them ? This is 
really the psychological question of the relation of volition 
to previous tendencies and habits, and is best discussed in 
the form, When conflicting motives arise, is man able to 
choose either one of them, or is the choice inevitably deter- 
mined in advance by previous tendencies to action ? In de- 
fault of psychological analysis the question can only be deter- 
mined by noting similarities and differences between parents 
and offspring. That children " take after" their parents and 
1 Op. cit., p. 389. 



! 8 1 ] FREE- WILL AND E VOL U TION 5 ! 

grandparents is a fact of common observation, but the ex- 
ceptions are so numerous and puzzling that no sweeping 
deterministic generalization is on empirical grounds justi- 
fied. Technical discussion of the facts of heredity throws 
doubt also upon the validity of a deterministic argument 
founded upon them. If acquired characters are not inher- 
ited, then the thoughts and actions of ancestors do not 
wholly control the thoughts and actions of descendants. 
The only way a determinism of heredity can in this case be 
made out is to hold that each individual's habits of thought 
and action are absolutely determined by the " continuity of 
the germ plasm" — a doctrine so hopelessly materialistic that 
it will not find ready acceptance. 

The facts of social evolution, we conclude, do not support 
the deterministic creed, unless we argue in the familiar circle, 
" It did happen so, therefore it must have happened so." 
Sociologists may and, in fact, sometimes do use the argu- 
ment that social phenomena must be subject to law, or there 
can be no science of society, but this is to make determinism 
a postulate of sociology, rather than an inference from social 
phenomena. 



Ill 

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM 

FREEDOM in willing may be denied, as we have seen, on 
the ground that volition is related to brain-movement, either 
as necessary effect (automatism), or as inevitable accompa- 
niment (materialistic parallelism) ; or because the volition 
of the individual is determined by the volition of his ances- 
tors. Added to these forms of determinism, which may be 
called the psychophysical and the evolutional, there is a de- 
terminism based on purely psychological grounds. The 
denial of free-will may be reached as the outcome of an anal- 
ysis of volition itself, or of the relation of volition to other 
elements of mental content, or by a failure to find any per- 
manent center of activity or self, of which freedom may be 
predicated. All the arguments for determinism are expres- 
sions, in different ways, of the theoretical demand for the 
universality of causation. If A be chosen instead of B, there 
must be some reason for making that particular choice, and 
this reason, whether it be found in a state of the brain, or in 
the volitions of ancestors, or in the constraint of a prevalent 
motive, is an antecedent condition which determines the 
choice as certainly as any physical cause determines its 
effect. All the arguments for determinism are but different 
applications of the causal principle to volition. 

The positive arguments for indeterminism are practically 
reducible to two. The first is the so-called consciousness of 
freedom, " the immediate affirmation of consciousness that 
in the moment of action we are free." The second belongs 
to ethics, and is, that freedom of choice is a necessary pre- 
52 [182 



! 83 J THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM 53 

supposition for the interpretation of the facts of our moral 
nature. It is the conviction, in Professor James' words, "that 
what ought to be can be, and that bad acts cannot be fated, 
but that good acts must be possible in their place." 

The psychological argument for free-will is the so-called 
consciousness of freedom, or the consciousness of a selective 
and directive power in virtue of which we may, within 
limits, control the course of our thinking and our conduct. 
It is imperative to get as clear an idea as possible as to 
what the testimony of consciousness really is. Does the 
" consciousness of freedom " mean that we are outside of 
prison walls, and out of the clutches of the law (absence of 
external restraint) ; or that we cause our own actions (spon- 
taneity, so-called) ; or that we might have done otherwise in 
the circumstances (" power of alternative choice ") ; or that 
we can do anything we please, for example, jump over the 
moon? It will be generally agreed that it means this much 
at least, that in the formation, and consequently in the reali- 
zation, of our purposes, we, as psychical individuals are caus- 
ally efficient. In its feeling of freedom consciousness does 
not testify that the individual is a causa sui in the sense of 
having the ground of his existence in himself, or that 
thought and bodily action can be independent of the laws of 
thought and of gravitation. It does testify, however, that 
the individual is really an actor rather than a passive spec- 
tator in the game of life, that his actions are determined 
by him and not for him by something outside of his own 
personality. We may at least safely say that' conscious- 
ness testifies to a conative freedom, meaning by this that the 
sources of the individual's life of effort and striving are to be 
found within the circle of his own conscious life. 

If the feeling of causative power is an illusion, as the me- 
chanical determinist must hold, it remains to be explained 
how the illusion arises. The most notable attempt in this 



cj4 -THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [184 

direction is that of Professor Miinsterberg's Willenshandhtng. 
In this monograph the feeling of self-activity accompany- 
ing acts of "external will," terminating upon the movements 
of the body, and of " internal will," terminating upon the 
course of our thoughts, is recognized, indeed, as the essen- 
tial thing in volition, but the will is nevertheless resolved 
into a complex of presentations or sensations. 1 All sponta- 
neity or causal efficiency is thus eliminated. The will is 
" phenomenalized," that is, reduced to atoms of " conscious 
phenomena;" and the residuum in case of voluntary move- 
ment is a memory-image of a former movement, the " kin- 
aesthetic idea," followed by the sensations of the movement 
actually made. We come to believe in a causal connection 
between the anticipatory idea and the movement simply be- 
cause of the priority of the idea to the sensation of the 
movement. The memory image becomes the " constant 
signal of the movement." 2 

This account is accepted by Professor Loeb in his recent 
treatise on " The Physiology of the Brain!' He says : " The 
will is only a function of the mechanism of the associative 
memory. We speak of conscious volition if an idea of the 
resulting final complex of sensations is present before the 
movements causing it have taken place or have ceased." 3 
When a given brain-center is stimulated there is a double 
effect; a reflex current going down the motor nerve and 
producing the movement, and an innervation of the memory- 
center corresponding to the idea of the movement. There 
is thus the memory-image of the movement, and later, the 
muscular sensation of the movement when actually made, 

1 " The will is only a complex of sensations." It is a name for a group of sensa- 
tions (Empfindungeti) only distinguished from other sensations by its complex- 
ity and constancy. Willenshandlung, p. 62. 

2 P- 145- 
s p. 216. 



185] THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM 55 

but no causal connection between the kinaesfhetic idea and 
the motor nerve current. Professor Loeb remarks : 

" As we do not realize this any more than we realize the 
inverted character of the retina-image, we consider the 
memory effect of the innervation as the cause of the muscu- 
lar effect. The common cause of both effects, the innervat- 
ing process, escapes our immediate observation as our senses 
do not perceive it. The will of the metaphysician is then 
clearly the outcome of an illusion due to the necessary in- 
completeness of self-observation." 1 

The union of an automatic theory of movement with a 
sensational psychology which " phenomenalizes " the will is 
not uncommon, and is in fact inevitable. If the bodily 
mechanism is self-sufficing, the will must be reduced to 
impotence, or really to non-existence. Professor Munster- 
berg's explanation of the illusion of personal agency is not 
easily applicable to acts of " internal will," and it has the 
fatal objection that in breaking the connection between pur- 
pose and its fulfillment in the mental sphere, it robs the 
thinking process of all continuity. Besides, the theory is 
applicable strictly only to cases of single-motived volition. 
Where there is a weighing of motives, the suspense of de- 
liberation, the simple formula of anticipatory image followed 
by experienced sensation, does not explain the whole pro- 
cess. 2 As is well-known, the author himself recognizes the 
inadequacy of his theory as an account of our concrete 
experience. "We do not feel ourselves such conglomerates 
of psychophysical elements, and the men whom we admire 
and condemn, love and hate, are for us not identical with 
those combinations of psychical atoms which pull and push 
one another after psychological laws. We do not mean, 

1 Op. cit., p. 216. 

2 For fuller criticism of the theory, see A. Seth : Man's Place in the Cosmos, ch. 
iii; J. E. Creighton : The Will (Ithaca, \i 



56 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [j86 

with our responsibility and with our freedom in the moral 
world, that our consciousness is the passive spectator of 
psychological processes which go on casually determined 
by laws, satisfied that some of the causes are inside of our 
skull, and not outside." 1 

The inadequacy, even for psychology, of an account of 
volition which reduces it to a complex of sensations is 
pointed out in a recent treatise. 2 From the standpoint of 
the " idea psychology," Miss Calkins finds three features 
in ordinary volition over and above a mere anticipation of 
the result to be obtained. There is (i) an idea of the 
future, linked with the antecedent image as the idea of 
the past is with a simple memory-image; (2) a feeling of 
realness — what we will, we will to be real, and (3) a con- 
sciousness of the linkage of the particular image with future 
reality. 3 But even when the analysis is carried thus far, the 
author confesses, it " must strike every one as a little forced 
and artificial." " Will is a consciousness of my active con- 
nection with other selves or with things, an imperious rela- 
tion, a domineering mood, a sort of bullying attitude." 4 
Again, in the account given of deliberation, it is said : " It 
must be added that the accounts of deliberation, formulated 
in terms of the psychology of ideas, are far less convincing, 
that is, less adequate, than descriptions of deliberation as op- 
position of distinct tendencies of a self. Such doctrines of 
conflicting ideas often, indeed, win their credence, because 
we unconsciously add to the conception of alternating ideas 
the more fundamental one of warring self-activities." 5 

In any account which may be given either of the " will to 

1 Psychology and Life, p. 1 6. 

* Introduction to Psychology, by Mary Whiton Calkins. 
8 pp. 300-301. 

* P. 307- 
•p. 319- 



187] THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM 57 

lenow" or of the "will to act," the sense of personal 
activity and agency cannot, we believe, be eliminated ex 
cept at the expense of psychological truth. When it is 
explained as illusory by an appeal to the psychophysical 
mechanism, thought itself is inevitably reduced to a me- 
chanical process. 

The real psychological question concerns not the causal 
connection between purpose and its fulfillment, but the con- 
nection of volition with what precedes it in consciousness — 
in short, the relation of volition to motives. At the moment 
I feel that I can remain seated or rise from my chair as I 
choose. So much all admit. But the determinist often 
limits the consciousness of freedom to a consciousness of 
power to act out the choice already made. I can read this 
book if I choose, or that magazine if I choose, but there is 
no freedom of choice in the sense of a power of alternative 
choice — only a freedom of action in accordance with the 
choice which is, as it were, a given element. But of two 
equally customary and appropriate actions, I not only feel 
that I may do this or that, if I happen to choose the one or 
the other, but I feel, as I deliberate, that I can throw the 
weight into either scale, that it is in my power either to 
choose this or to choose the other. Back of this choice, as 
I take it, consciousness does not go. It may possibly be 
that consciousness, like a floating iceberg four-fifths of which 
is below the surface of the ocean, is absolutely determined in 
its choice by the steady set of subliminal tendencies rather 
than by the shifting winds of conscious motive; but of this, 
if it be true, our conviction of freedom at the moment of 
decision gives us no sign. 

Most determinists x admit the consciousness of freedom in 

1 But not all. Professor Thilly, for example, complains that the libertarian " is 
apt to throw into this consciousness of freedom his entire doctrine, thereby garb- 
ling the facts to suit his theory." {Introduction to Ethics, p. 334.) 



5 8 THE FREE- WILL PR OBLEM \\%% 

the sense here indicated, but reject the testimony as illusory. 
The effort to explain how the illusion has arisen furnishes an 
interesting chapter in the history of thought. We feel free, 
it is said, because we are ignorant of the causes by which 
our desires are determined, or ignorant as to what the result 
of our deliberation is to be. A wealth of illustrations is used 
to show how necessity is compatible with the feeling of lib- 
erty. Spinoza's classic illustration is of the stone con- 
sciously endeavoring to persist in its proper motion. 
Bayle speaks of a weather-vane desiring to turn east while 
the wind blows from the west, or of the needle pas- 
sionately aspiring to take the direction of north to which it 
is drawn by magnetic attraction. 1 Or as the hypnotic 
subject always obeys the hypnotist's orders, so all men,, 
though acting under the illusion of freedom, are" really only 
obeying inevitably the suggestions of the great hypnotist 
Nature. 

M. Guyau, in an acute discussion, 2 is prodigal in explana- 
tions, giving at least three. The first is the illustration of 
the dog in leash, whose preference happens to coincide with 
the will of its master ; secondly, " No one can ever foresee 
with absolute certainty what we will prefer to-morrow"; 
and, thirdly, " We can never . . . conceive of an ac- 
tion as impossible, for the mere conception of the action 
makes it possible ; hence we are necessarily free in our own 
eyes." Again, following M. Fouillee, he says : " The idea of 
liberty determines us to act as if we were free." 3 

None of these explanations wholly satisfy. We are 
ignorant of the causes and of the future condition of a 
good many things of which we do not predicate freedom. 

1 See A. Joyau: "La Libert'e Morale, p. 39. 
2 Education and Heredity, pp. 61-64. 
^ p. 87. 



189] THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM 59 

The stone would no longer be a stone nor act as a stone if 
endowed with consciousness and desire, 1 and no dog in leash 
ever perfectly obeyed without constraint its master's wishes. 
Again, the consciousness of freedom in the presence of 
alternatives is different from the conception of the possi- 
bility of different actions. It is the conception of ability 
rather than of mere possibility, which goes with that of 
freedom. 

M. Fouillee, seeing that the consciousness of freedom can- 
not be wholly irrelevant to subsequent action, makes it a 
dynamic idea, an " idce-force." The idea of freedom is one 
of the complex of ideas determining our volition. But in the 
moment of deliberation, the idea of freedom attaches alike 
to both of two actions, thought of as alike possible. It is 
not then in itself sufficient to determine the decision between 
them. It is true that belief in our ability to perform an act 
makes the performance of it easier and more probable, as 
Professor James has urged in his Will to Believe, but this 
confidence in our ability is often reached as the result of voli- 
tion — of voluntary attention — before it becomes a factor in the 
final decision. As M. Fouillee himself says ; " Given, a sys- 
tem of forces however great, the idea of freedom (liberte), 
always present in myself, enables me to conceive a force 
still greater; and if I put this idea to the test I can succeed. 
. . . I can always, in virtue of the idea of freedom, pass 
from one force to another still greater; I have only to con- 
tinue this movement to obtain the degree of force necessary 
to each action." 2 The idea of liberty can apparently, in this 
exposition, be used at will to increase our power of acting, 
but it remains doubtful whether the use we make of it is 
predetermined or not. If there is no real liberty in the use 

1 Cf. Ladd : Philosophy of Conduct, pp. 154 f. 
2 La Liberty et le Determinisme, pp. 241-242. 



6q THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [jqq 

we may make of the idea of liberty, the illusion and the 
failure to account for the illusion remain as before. 1 

Over against the consciousness of freedom on the psycho- 
logical side may be placed the analysis of volition into a 
conflict of motives with a resulting prevalence of the strongest 
motive. The points of this well-worn discussion may be 
briefly indicated. 

When Bassanio chooses the leaden casket or Shylock the 
pound of flesh, it is easy to say that, given the circumstances 
of the case and the character of the men, the idea of these 
objects had for the respective choosers a certain inherent 
power, which caused them to be chosen to the exclusion of 
competing ideas. Why is one of two competing motives 
chosen? The simple answer is, that it was the strongest 
motive. By motive we must here mean the idea of an object 
or action which claims the attention and solicits the will, and 
which, in the absence of competing ideas, would " stably 
prevail" in thought and issue in appropriate action. To 
say that the motive which prevailed is the strongest mo- 
tive, may be simple tautology. It was chosen because it 
was chosen. If the statement means more than this, it must 
mean that previous to the decision and fiat which terminated 
the conflict, the motive which prevailed had, as related to 
the mind of the chooser, a certain inherent efficiency or 
power, which secured for it inevitable victory over other 
ideas, seeming to dispute with it the possession of the field. 

That ideas of movement have a certain dynamic character, 
a certain tendency, in the absence of inhibiting factors, to 
get themselves expressed in movement, there can be no 
doubt; but this is far from saying that their action is 
mechanical, like the impact of one billiard ball upon another, 
that the outcome of conflicting motives is in any sense com- 

1 Delboeuf declares that "the illusion of freedom is as inexplicable as the fact 
of freedom." " Determinisme et Liberte," Revue Phil., xiii, p. 463. 



!^ T "] THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM fa 

parable to the "resultant" of two physical forces differing in 
direction. " Physical causation presents us no analogy to 
the selecting, intensifying, abbreviating and synthesizing 
activity of attention." 1 

Analogy drawn from vital phenomena may be used to 
describe the selective activity of attention when no special 
effort is put forth, but where a certain idea, for instance that 
of a disagreeable duty, can be attended to and held in mind 
only by an effort, vital analogies are as inadequate as those 
drawn from physical phenomena. We surely feel in the case 
suggested that the amount of effort in attending to the idea can 
be increased or diminished, in other words that more than 
one possibility of thought or action is open to us. The testi- 
mony of consciousness in such cases seems unmistakable, 
that we not only put forth effort, and so cause our own 
actions, but that over and above the simple reactive con- 
sciousness there is a power of attending with effort through 
which the time and direction of the reactions may be 
altered. If there is such a power at the centre of personal- 
ity, it plainly transcends the spheres of mechanical or vital 
reaction, and so is not statable in purely mechanical or 
biological terms. 

" The question of fact," says Professor James, " in the free- 
will controversy is . . . extremely simple. It relates solely to 
the amount of effort of attention or consent which we can at any 
time put forth. Are the duration and intensity of this effort 
fixed functions of the object, or are they not ? ... It seems 
as if the effort were an independent variable, as if we might 
exert more or less of it in any given case." 2 

Granted that consciousness testifies to the power of choos- 
ing between presented motives, its testimony cannot be finally 
accepted until we answer the question, Who or what is it 

1 Baldwin : Feelings and Will, p. 371. 

2 Principles of Psychology, vol. 2, p. 571. 



g 2 THE FREE- WILL PROBLEM [ j g 2 

that is felt to be free ? If there is no self " irresolvable into 
motives," there is no self to choose between motives. " If 
there is no ego, I cannot, of course, be conscious of myself; 
and if I cannot be conscious of myself, I cannot be con- 
scious of myself as free." * Underlying the question of free- 
dom is the question whether there is a permanent unitary 
center of thought, feeling and volition. 

Kant made his conviction both of the freedom and the 
reality of the self, except as a bare logical subject, a postu- 
late of the moral imperative, " I ought." There is no doubt 
that in my moral relationships, in the claims which I make 
upon others and in the duties which I acknowledge toward 
others, I have an intense feeling or conviction of my own 
personal reality and separate identity. But while this con- 
viction is, perhaps, at a maximum in moral experience, it is 
not necessary, as Dr. Ward suggests, to wait for the moral im- 
perative 7" ought to disclose the practical / can." 2 Not only 
in moments of moral emotion but in moments of purposeful 
activity we have an unmistakable certainty of ourselves as 
the real actors. The self is felt to be a center of activity or 
spontaneity, standing in influential relations with the other 
constituents of reality. Says Mr. A. Seth: "In the pur- 
posive ' I will ' each man is real, and is immediately con- 
scious of his own reality. Whatever else may or may not 
be real, this is real. This is the fundamental belief, around 
which skepticism may weave its maze of doubts and logical 
puzzles, but from which it is eventually powerless to dislodge 
us, because no argument can affect an immediate certainty." 3 

In the very processes of thought we have also a vivid 
consciousness of the thinking subject as active in appropriat- 

1 Momerie : Personality, p. 86. 

* Naturalism and Agnosticism, vol. ii., p. 190. 

3 Two Lectures on Theism, p. 46. 



193] THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM 63 

ing, selecting, rejecting, its object. If all our beliefs were 
accepted ready-made there would obviously be no test 
of truth, just as if all actions were of the reflex order there 
would be no room for moral distinctions. Without the 
power in the intellectual sphere of holding the judgment in 
suspense, of doubting, or weighing and reflecting, there would 
■be no science nor philosophy. Not only would man be the 
measure of all things, but each belief would be the measure 
of itself. There would be no distinction between truth and 
error — no body of knowledge 

" won from the void and formless infinite." 

While Ago ergo sum is a useful supplement to the Cartesian 
argument, yet the latter retains its force unless the mind be 
regarded as a passive intellectual spectator, a mere pen- 
sioner on outward forms, and the / think be conceived as a 
mere flow of ideas from which the sense of personal owner- 
ship and agency is eliminated. 

But can the immediate conviction of self which we have 
in moments of activity be called by the name of knowledge ? 
Is it not rather a sort of mystical feeling to which no definite 
idea corresponds, and which does not attain to the clearness 
and definiteness which would entitle it to be called an object 
of knowledge ? For our purpose here it is indifferent 
whether the intimate conviction and certainty of selfhood 
which comes to us especially in moments of purposeful ac- 
tivity and of intense emotion be called knowledge,, or belief, 
or conviction, or feeling, so long as it gives certitude of the 
existence of a permanent and identical self. Of necessity 
the knowledge, if we may use the word, of the self that 
knows is different from all other knowledge, because more 
immediate, but for that very reason more certain. As soon 
as we begin to analyze the living self, its life has vanished. 
We look for the sejf in some pure thought or conation, or 



6 4 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM \_I94- 

emotion, but it is none of these, because it unites them all 
and is the presupposition of all. 

Mr. Bradley has shown us the difficulty of attaining to a 
definite and self-consistent conception of the self. The self, 
according to him, is " a mere bundle of discrepancies." J 
The idea of activity of any kind is " riddled with contradic- 
tions," 2 and the self, being what it is, is not able to bring 
order out of chaos. The real trouble with the idea of the 
self is that it combines diversity and unity, and " we cannot 
reach any defensible thought, any intellectual principle, by 
which it is possible to understand how diversity can be com- 
prehended in unity." 3 Yet Mr. Bradley admits that "the 
self is no doubt the highest form of experience we have, but, 
for all that, is not a true form. It does not give us the facts 
as they are in reality ; and, as it gives them, they are appear- 
ance, appearance and error." 4 

It must be remarked that while " appearance," being in 
Mr. Bradley's system a predicate of the Absolute, is always 
an appearance #/" something, it is not in the case of the self an 
appearance to anything. Other one-sided appearances, like 
goodness, truth, etc., may be appearances to a self, but to 
whom or what is the self an appearance — or even an error? 
Another self, below this apparent and erroneous self, is, of 
necessity, assumed, as that to which this illusory self can 
appear, and it seems a just criticism on Mr. Bradley's posi- 
tion that in holding " the highest form of experience we 
have" to be "not a true form," he is undermining his own 
work, and destroying the value both of his criticism of the 
world of appearance and his construction of a " spiritual 
Absolute" in which appearances are transcended. 

1 Appearance and Reality, p. 120. 
J p. 115. 
•p. 119. 
* Ibid. 



!95] THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM 65 

Mr. Spencer has recourse also to the riddles of Zeno to 
discredit knowledge of self, and then adds : " A true cogni- 
tion of self implies a state in which knowing and known are 
one ... So that the personality of which each is conscious, 
and of which the existence is to each a fact beyond all others 
the most certain, is yet a thing which cannot truly be known 
at all : knowledge of it is forbidden by the very nature of 
thought." r The recognition of the self as " a fact beyond all 
others most certain," might more properly lead to an expan- 
sion of the meaning of knowledge so as to include this fun- 
damental certainty, rather than to a relegation of self to the 
limbo of the unknowable after this somewhat empty compli- 
ment has been paid. It is a stock complaint against Mr. 
Spencer's system that we know only what we are less certain 
about, while what we are most certain about we cannot 
know. 

It may be useful to treat the mental life from an imper- 
sonal standpoint, and to banish the soul as " a metaphysical 
surplussage, for which psychology has no use." (Wundt. ) 
The self is then found nowhere, though really present every- 
where, because we have tacitly agreed to ignore it. But 
a psychology without the soul must at best be a mere simu- 
lacrum of real experience, alike on its theoretical, its conative 
and its emotional sides ; and as many voices now unite in 
protesting, it must be supplemented by a philosophy, if not 
a psychology, written from the standpoint of concrete per- 
sonal experience. 

The self of which freedom is predicated is admittedly the 
great mystery. Yet it may be known as the ocean is known, 
while we have never sounded its depths. It is never pre- 
sented as a mere object among the other objects of know- 

1 First Principles, pp. 65-66. 

2 See, for example, Professor Ormond's presidential address, Phil. Rev., vol. xii, 
no. 2. 



66 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [igQ 

ledge ; yet in our thinking and purposing and striving, in our 
action and passion, in the claims which we make upon others, 
we are more certain of its existence than we are of anything 
else. It can be repudiated only at the cost of discrediting 
all our knowledge. It may be so mysterious that its concep- 
tion seems to be riddled with contradictions, yet its banish- 
ment from the world of reality involves the deeper contradic- 
tion of knowledge without a knower. Nor is the self a purely 
logical subject — the J think of apperception which gives unity 
to knowledge. The / will of purpose, the / love, I suffer of 
emotional experience, the I ought of the ethical demand, 
supply it with content, and show it to be the center in which 
thought, volition and emotion are blended. The self cannot 
be snared in its own web. Whether we deduce it from an 
absolute principle, or empirically trace its descent from 
lower forms of conscious life, or analytically resolve it into 
a bundle of sensations and ideas, the self remains the logical 
prius and the real actor in all its theorizing activities. 



IV 

FREEDOM AS ETHICAL POSTULATE 

HERCULES at the forks of the road is not a specially im- 
pressive figure unless, in the choice of the path which he 
shall take, there are moral issues involved. If turning to 
the right means following the line of least resistance and 
choosing a life of ignominious ease for one of heroic en- 
deavor, then the situation becomes interesting and the de- 
cision momentous. To the mind in which the struggle be- 
tween the solicitations of the lower life and the call of the 
higher life takes place, two roads seem to be alike open, 
two courses of action to be alike possible. To the mind of 
Hercules, in the situation supposed, there was, we may 
imagine, no thought or suspicion that inherited tendencies, 
previous habits of choice, or outward circumstances had 
determined in advance the issue of the struggle. Defeat and 
victory were to him, we must suppose, alike present possibili- 
ties, and he felt himself surely to be more than an interested 
spectator, waiting, perhaps, with breathless eagerness for the 
issue of the conflict. He felt, we may say, that he held that 
issue in his own power — that he could crown himself as vic- 
tor, or weakly fall in his own defeat. Here, then, is the 
moral argument for freedom of will. It is the belief that 
two possibilities are open, and that it is in one's power to 
make either one or the other actual, which makes duty im- 
perative, adds point and meaning to the sentiments of self- 
reproach and self-respect, and lends interest and intensity to 
the moral struggle. It is the same belief, as a postulate in 
the minds of others, which conditions the feelings of indig- 
197] . 6 7 



68 THE FREE- WILL PR OBLEM [ i g$ 

nation and approbation, and the public expression of praise 
and blame in civil and social institutions. If the free-will 
problem were concerned merely with the abstract possibility 
of alternate modes of action, without being so intimately 
wrapped up with our moral sentiments and convictions, it 
might have furnished an attractive field for the exercise of 
scholastic subtlety, but would never have been, as it has 
been, one of the great battle-grounds of thought. 

If man were a perfect being, never knowing the stings of 
remorse, the humiliation of moral weakness, nor the glow of 
righteous indignation at the faults of his fellow-men, it is pos- 
sible that life might be reduced to a sort of " seraphic insip- 
idity," but, at any rate, a hypothetical power to turn aside 
from the path of right would be regarded as a possession of 
doubtful value. "I protest," said Mr. Huxley on one occa- 
sion, " that if some great power could agree to make me always 
think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being 
turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning be- 
fore I get out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer. 
The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; 
the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the 
cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me." 1 

In our present estate, as we know too well, the case is very 
different, and the important question is not whether we can 
do wrong — this we know already ; but whether, in a given 
case, we can do right. The determinist, if he is to remain a 
determinist in the full sense, must hold that where inclination 
is followed rather than duty, there was no possibility, under 
the circumstances, of any other course. In fact, inclination 
and duty as motives are both parts of the psychic mechanism, 
and both their presence as motives in the mind and the preva- 
lence of one over the other are the inevitable and predeter- 
mined result of a character or temperament which comes 

1 Collected Essays, vol. i, pp. 192, f. 



1 99] FREEDOM AS ETHICAL POSTULATE £g 

to a man ready-made, and of circumstances over which he 
has no control. " The action," says Professor T. H. Green, 
" is as necessarily related to the character and circum- 
stances as any event to the sum of conditions." 

If man's preference and choice and even his thoughts, the 
objects which he attends to, the ends which he proposes to 
to himself, and the intensity of his effort to bring those ends 
to pass, are the inevitable outcome of past experiences and 
endowments and present environment, as " necessary" as is 
the fall of a stone when unsupported to the ground, then, 
surely, the freedom that remains is very limited. Of a man 
whose actions are not only influenced but determined by his 
past, we speak as having lost his freedom. He becomes the 
"slave of his passions;" in the judgment of charity, the 
"victim of circumstances;" in any case, below the level of 
the normal moral individual. 

A natural history of volition discribes it as the reaction of 
the empirical self upon environment. If, with a given 
stimulus, a certain result — just this result and no other 
— inevitably follows, it seems to be a matter merely of 
verbal preference whether you ascribe the result to the ex- 
ternal (physical) factor, or to the internal ' v psychical) factor. 
There is the same " necessity" about the result whether you 
choose to regard the physical conditions as cause, ignoring 
psychical conditions, or whether you regard the psychical 
conditions as cause, ignoring the physical conditions. The 
determinist insists that he feels no compulsion or restraint, 
no necessity in acting as he does. He simply declares that 
his choice was not made at haphazard, but was the result of 
all the conditions. No more, it may be replied, would the 
stone in falling to the ground, or the tree in growing toward 
the light, feel any compulsion or necessity if endowed with 
with consciousness, yet the movements of stone or tree if 
accompanied by consciousness would not thereby be 
brought into the category of moral action. 



j THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [ 2 00 

What, then, we ask, is meant exactly by the spontaneity or 
activity of self, which the determinist predicates of it? It must 
be more than a mere capacity of movement in reference to 
stimulus, more than a mere " activity generally," for "a mere 
activity generally must act equally in all directions ; must act 
equally in favor of or against any movement or doing, and 
neutralize itself." 1 It must be a capacity for acitvity of a 
certain character, which ensures that a definite and unique 
response would be given to a definite stimulus, and that suc- 
cessive responses would be modified by those previously made. 
Each response is then in a sense determined by those which 
precede it and determines those which follow it, but it is as 
certainly the result of the nature with which it started as 
the turning of the plant toward the light. How can moral 
character or responsibility be attributed to that which is so 
exactly describable in terms commonly believed to exclude 
morality and responsibility? How can a man be reponsible 
for actions which are absolutely determined by the diposition 
with which he was born (through no will of his own), and 
the physical and social environment in which he is immersed 
(through no will of his own) ? It may be replied that he is 
endowed with a power of self-activity. But a power of activity 
in itself has no moral character, and if a being endowed with 
it has no alternative as to the time in which it shall be exer- 
cised, or the channel in which it shall be directed, it seems 
inappropriate to ascribe to such a being moral attributes. 
^Character becomes synonymous with temperament. It may 
be very beautiful or very repulsive, and call forth admiration 
or disgust, but the heat of moral indignation and the glow 
of reverent approval are alike out of place. If the whole 
truth of the matter is that man's character comes to him 
ready-made, so to speak, at birth, and only unfolds inevitably 
according to certain laws, we miss from human life the very 

1 Hazard, Freedom of the Mind in Willing, p. 248. 



20l] FREEDOM AS ETHICAL POSTULATE yi 

element which gives meaning to moral distinctions, value to 
the moral ideal and significance to the moral struggle, and 
conditions the possibility both of the tragedies and triumphs 
of the moral life. 

To the argument that free-will is a necessary postulate of 
morality, the determinist may bluntly reply, as he has done 
in exceptional cases, " So much the worse for morality." 
The more usual and more effective reply is that determinism 
is not only (i) consistent with morality, but is (2) essential 
to morality. In the former part of this reply, as we have 
already noticed, the determinist pleads that we are not under 
compulsion or restraint, that we can do as we please, that 
we cause our own actions, and therefore can properly be held 
responsible for them. In this contention that his theory is 
consistent with responsibility, the determinist is on the de- 
fensive. He may simply assert, on the testimony of con- 
sciousness, that we feel that we are responsible, thus playing 
into the hands of the indeterminist, who also appeals to con- 
sciousness ; or he may seek to modify the meaning of respon- 
sibility so as to make it compatible with his theory ; or may 
turn the tables upon indeterminism by insisting that deter- 
minism is essential to responsibility. Sometimes at this 
point an antinomy is acknowledged. " This seems to be an 
antinomy of the practical reason. Responsibility, an unques- 
tionable fact of consciousness, is not possible on the suppo- 
sition that the will is free, or that it is not free." * Professor 
Rhiel acknowledges that to treat responsibility together with 
freedom as illusory — " to give up resposibility in view of the 
necessity of all action" 2 — would be the easiest way out of 
the dilemma. Shrinking, however, from this conclusion, he 
attempts to adapt the conception of responsibility to deter- 

1 Rhiel : Science and Metaphysics, p. 239. The chapter quoted illustrates all 
the forms of reply noticed above. 

2 p. 240. 



72 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM ^202 

ministic postulates by explaining this conception as a social 
product. " Responsibility," he says, " is a phenomenon of 
social ethics, and as such it is to be explained by social psy- 
chology." T We are not responsible to ourselves, but to so- 
siety. Responsibility is the reacting judgment which pro- 
ceeds from the community in which we live, on the social 
results of our action, and farther on its motives. 2 

The argument for the social origin of the feeling of respon- 
sibility, admitting its validity, seems in this connection beside 
the point. The social judgment, of which the individual 
self- judgment is the reflex, undoubtedly imputes demerit to 
the offender and merit to the good citizen. If it is correct 
in this imputation, the argument for freedom as the impli- 
cate of responsibility still holds ; while if it is incorrect, the 
social judgment which imputes merit and demerit is mis- 
taken, and the individual reflex, the sense of personal respon- 
sibility is illusory — the conclusion our author sought to avoid. 
That there is more, however, in our feeling of responsibility 
than a response to the actual judgments of society, Professor 
Rhiel himself shows : "If we feel ourselves responsible for 
the disposition that remains hidden from our fellow-men, we 
put ourselves in thought before an ideal community or an 
ideal person, who, we imagine, knows our motives and ap- 
proves or condemns them." 3 But here again the responsi- 
bility which we feel to an ideal self, or to an ideal commu- 
nity or person either implies free-will, or our feeling of 
responsibility for our inward thoughts is illusory, and 
these lose all moral character. Over against the thesis, 
"Moral responsibility demands freedom, in order that an 
act may be good or bad," may be placed the antithesis, 

1 p. 242. 

*p. 244. So also, in substance, Miiffelman : Das Problem der Willensfreiheit 
in der neuesten deutchen Philosophie, Leipzig, 1 902, p. 2. 
8 Ibid. 



203] FREEDOM AS ETHICAL POSTULATE 73 

"Moral responsibility demands necessity, that an action 
may justly be attributed to a person " ; but the thesis can 
not be disproved on its own ground merely by showing the 
social origin of responsibility. 

The argument is often transferred from the subjective 
ground of the felt responsibility for personal action to the 
objective ground of criminal jurisprudence. How can the law 
hold the criminal responsible, it is said, unless he had the 
power not to have committed the crime? The arguments 
here are mainly a repetition of those already reviewed. If 
the criminal acts are in all cases the inevitable result of the 
nervous organization with which the criminals were born, the 
so-called criminals are unfortunate, not guilty. They have 
drawn the bad numbers, while we — the virtuous — have 
drawn the good numbers. Perhaps it is the social organiza- 
tion which irresistibly leads a certain individual to commit a 
certain crime. Then society as a whole becomes the real 
criminal, and it is a foolish weakness to be indignant at the 
individual wrong-doer. Tout comprendre c'est tout pardoner, 
because there is no fault to pardon. Punishment cannot be 
justified, but no more can it be condemned, for as a reaction 
of society against injury it is as inevitable and as devoid of 
moral quality as the original crime. " Sacred rights of the 
individual" there are none, because the individual, without 
ability to act otherwise than he does act, has no responsibility 
to society. Collective despotism and the destruction of 
political liberty would be, it is claimed, the logical outcome 
of a deterministic criminology. 1 

The indeterminist holds that there can be no moral responsi- 
bility and no rational ground for our moral sentiments, unless 
there is at some time in normal experience a real capacity, 
independent of environment and inherited tendencies, of suc- 
cess or failure, progress or regress, in the moral life. If a per- 

1 c f' Joyau : La Liberie Morale, p. 65. 



74 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [204 

fectly definite stimulus must give a perfectly definite reaction, 
it makes but little difference for ethics whether the reason 
assigned be the nature of the stimulus or the " spontaneity" 
of the subject. In either case there is no possibility of acting 
differently, nor even the small consolation of a possibility of 
not acting at all. The necessity of heredity, or inherited 
character, is as inexorable — no more so, but as much so — as 
the necessity attributed to physical causation. Should the 
determinist disclaim the doctrine of necessity the fatalistic 
inferences disappear ; but so, if the disclaimer is genuine, 
does the historic difference between himself and the inde- 
terminist. 

Determinism has in reserve, however, a positive ethical 
argument of its own — that determinism is essential to 
morality. If an act is to be moral, and one to which moral 
responsibility can attach, it must, it is claimed, be a true ex- 
pression of the character of the agent. Unless a given act 
is definitely determined by previous dispositions and habits, 
it does not bear the stamp of the agent's personality, and he 
should not be held properly responsible for it. A power of 
alternative choice, the contention is, is really a power of un- 
regulated or irrational choice, and confusion is introduced 
not only into the physical but into the moral order. Once 
more, if certain motives presented to a given mind have no 
sure and definite effect, the labor of the educator and re- 
former is useless, and reason is dethroned in favor of an irra- 
tional chance as the guide of life. " It is evident," says 
Comte, " that improvement by education supposes the exist- 
ence of requisite predispositions, and that each of them is 
subject to determinate laws, without which they could not 
be systematically influenced." * 

To the indeterminist's charge of fatalism, in short, the de- 
terminist replies with the counter-charge cf fortuitism, or hap- 

1 Quoted by Hollander: Mental Functions of the Brain, p. 359. 



205] FREEDOM AS ETHICAL POSTULATE 75 

hazard chance. Thus Professor Fullerton declares : " I view 
with horror the doctrine that the teacher's desk and the pul- 
pit, the force of public opinion and the sanction of law, are 
of no avail. I am unwilling to assume without evidence that 
each man's breast is the seat of uncaused and inexplicable 
explosions, which no man can predict, against the conse- 
quences of which no man can make provision, and which set 
at defiance all the forces which make for civilization." * 

If free-will would involve these absurdities, if it would 
" pull down the cardinal principles of ethics, politics and 
jurisprudence" (Fiske), if it would "pervert the entire order 
of nature in continually increasing extents " (Riehl), and 
"set at defiance all the forces which make for civilization" 
(Fullerton), it is justly anathematized by these authors. The 
conclusion that it would do so is founded on two assump- 
tions : (1) that, on the admission of free-will, previous 
habits of choice would make no difference in the frequency 
and intensity with which a certain motive would appeal to a 
given mind; (2) that a power to choose between alterna- 
tives means motiveless and causeless choice. Let us exam- 
ine now these assumptions in order. 

(1) Suppose the motives which could appeal to a certain 
individual to be arranged in a scale of ascending moral 
worths represented by the letters of the alphabet. At a 
given moment, let us further suppose, there is presented to 
his mind the choice between C and D, with the possibility 
of his choosing either. If he chooses C, not only will the 
probability of his choosing C as against D in future be 
strengthened, but there will be a tendency for D to drop out 
as a really influential motive altogether, and to be replaced 
by B. The opposite result will follow if D be chosen, and 
the next pair of alternatives will be D and E, lower in the 
scale. In this case we would have what the determinist de- 

1 " Freedom and ' Free-Will,' " Popular Science Monthly, Dec, 1900. 



jQ THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [206 

mands, a close relation between past habits of choice and 
present influences to action. Yet the present volition would 
not be hopelessly and irrevocably bound to the past, and 
there would be at every step the possibility of further moral 
advance or retrogression. The illustration is, of course, very 
crude, but it is merely intended to show the possibility of 
admitting freedom in a real sense while excluding the ab- 
surdities referred to. The man of proved integrity is not 
as likely to steal as the professional burglar, because the 
idea of tapping his neighbor's till never occurs to him, or if 
it should happen to cross his mind, is so foreign to all his 
habits of thought that it is instantly banished. We recog- 
nize here that an important truth underlies the determinist's 
polemic. When we are occupied with the ordinary routine, 
or the mind is relatively passive, the dominant motives are 
doubtless those which have been adopted in the past, and it 
may be admitted that past habits of thought and action 
will determine what motives will really solicit to action. It 
is, then, the prerogative of the will to issue the fiat or the 
veto, and it belongs to the very essence of right action to 
choose, it may be with intense effort, the higher motive in- 
stead of the lower. Moral victory is, then, worth securing, 
not only for its own sake, but because it makes future vic- 
tories more easy, and defeat becomes proportionately dis- 
astrous. 

The goal of freedom thus becomes such a cleansing of the 
springs of action, by continued negation of the lower mo- 
tive and suppression of the lower self, that the unworthy act 
shall become practically impossible, because not thought of 
as a real possibility. The birds are so often frightened away 
that they no longer light upon the head, much less make 
their nests in the hair. The saint, it may be believed, does 
not feel secure in the possession of his sainthood till tempta- 
tions to evil cease to allure him ; the philanthropist is not 



207] FREEDOM AS ETHICAL POSTULATE >jj 

sure of his altruism till he feels a healthy scorn for " mis- 
erable aims that end with self." We see thus why it is that 
we often pass judgment upon what we are rather than upon 
what we do. " We reproach ourselves for being such agents 
as to choose the good so feebly, or the bad so readily." 
When an act is committed which brings the sting of self- 
reproach, condemnation extends beyond the single act of 
choice to the previous choices which have prepared the way 
for it and made it possible. But the judgment upon self — 
the subject of the volition — does not imply that at every 
stage we were determined to act as we did ; rather we feel, 
certainly, that we have let ourselves drift when we might 
have prevented it. 

Suppose, now, that the goal of morality has been reached, 
and that unity and order have been brought into the moral 
universe through the subjection of all aims and desires to a 
supreme ideal, freely chosen and persistently followed. Is 
freedom thereby abrogated? We should rather say that its 
goal — perfect harmony with the moral law — has been at- 
tained. " Our wills are ours, to make them thine." But if 
the posse non peccare passes over into the non posse peccare> 
the impossibility of sinning will be different, say, from the 
impossibility of the hopeless drunkard's reform, an impossi- 
bility against which an element of his nature vainly protests 
and revolts. We may, if we please, call the climax of freedom 
moral necessity, but it is a necessity not antedating choice, 
but one which is freely chosen. A self-imposed necessity, 
the necessity of the moral imperative which says, " Here I 
stand ; I cannot do otherwise," is very different from a meta- 
physical necessity, or one which is imposed from without. 
And when the goal of freedom is reached, moral distinctions 
and moral values will not disappear, because the goal has 
been freely chosen. 

We have tried to show how, on the hypothesis of free- 



78 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [ 2 o8 

will, the choice of to-day can condition the range and inten- 
sity of the motives presented to-morrow, and so provide for 
moral progress and stability of character. Ethics demands 
for our acts of will not only liberty, in the sense of absence of 
necessity, but uniformity. We must be able to count upon what 
a man will do, to judge of his probable future actions by his 
past actions. This is what Professor Mackenzie seems to de- 
mand when he says that we need in the moral life not only free- 
dom but necessity, for necessity, he suggests, maybe defined 
as uniformity. 1 The reign of law is, indeed, one of the essen- 
tial conditions of freedom ; without it freedom would be of no 
use. A deterministic atmosphere is the only atmosphere in 
which freedom can breathe. Without a necessary connec- 
tion between cause and effect, between means and end, rea- 
son would never be sure that her commands would be exe- 
cuted and her purposes fulfilled. Again, each act of will 
must exert a certain permanent influence upon character, in 
a reflex way, if what we call a stable character is to be 
achieved, and if the demands of the lower nature are to be- 
come less importunate and the higher voices more clear and 
controlling. It is essential, we may say, to morality and to 
moral accountability that the fiat of will, when once issued, 
should leave an indelible impress not only upon the world 
of phenomena but upon the self that issues it. Without a 
determinism of things, things would not be serviceable to 
thought, there would be no certain channels of communica- 
tisn between mind and mind, all control over events would 
be lost and freedom would be reduced to impotence. With- 
out a determinism of habit, likewise, persistence in a chosen 
course of action would lack its reward of increased facility 
and skill, and the moral task would become a labor of 
Sisyphus, ever to be begun anew and never rewarded with 
real progress : 

1 Manual of Ethics, p. 93. 



209 1 FREEDOM AS ETHICAL POSTULATE yg 

" Nur das Gesetz kann uns die Freiheit geben." 

What place then remains for liberty, if the causal reign is so 
extended? M. Guyau, in his Non-Religion of the Future, 
speaks of the supposition that mere free-wills, not sub- 
stances, were created, and remarks: " It must be confessed 
that these free-wills have been immersed in a deterministic 
universe, which leaves them little liberty of action. . . . 
" If God gave us liberty, He was very miserly about it. 
. . . Why does our free-will exist in the midst of conditions 
so unfavorable to it, so calculated to render it ineffective?" 1 
The answer will be, as we have seen, that a deterministic 
atmosphere is not opposed to freedom, but is essential to its 
exercise ; and that, on the other hand, without the initial 
possibility of choosing evil as well as good, no morality, so 
far as we can see, would for the human race ever exist. To 
provide room for the reality and the development of the 
moral life two postulates are needed — first, freedom, that we 
may be able to choose the highest ideal, and, second, a 
certain connection which we may call conditioning, and in a 
sense causal, between the choices of to day and the choices 
of to-morrow, that we may be able to make continued pro- 
gress toward this ideal. 

* (2) The law of habit as applied to choices — that a choice 
once made is likely to be repeated — does not in itself fully 
satisfy the causal principle in its application to volition. 
The causal chain is broken, the determinist insists, if in any 
situation the possibility of two alternative responses is ad- 
mitted. Indeterminism at any point means to him law- 
lessness and chaos. To-day, it may be said, the contro- 
versy is somewhat narrowed. Psychological analysis has 
driven motiveless choice from the field, and it is generally 
acknowledged that man can no more act without motive 

'pp. 437-438. (E.T.) 



80 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM [ 2 io 

than he can jump out of his own skin. The real question 
now concerns the interpretation of the fact of motived choice. 
Where two lines of action are equally attractive and seem in 
deliberation equally to solicit the will, there is nothing in vo- 
litional experience to suggest that the motive actually 
adopted was so related to previous tendencies and habits 
that its choice was absolutely predetermined to the exclu- 
sion of the choice of the competing motive. On the con- 
trary, in deliberation and the moment of action conscious- 
ness testifies to power of selection between motives. Nor 
can appeal be successfully made to the ex post facto judg- 
ment that since A, as motive, was chosen instead of B, there- 
fore A was the " strongest " motive and necessarily prevailed 
over competitors. For in this case A is nothing apart from 
its being consciously attended to, and deliberately chosen, 
and the question at issue is as to the nature of conscious 
attention and deliberate choice. The only chance of finding 
empirical support for the deterministic assumption is by an 
appeal to a more or less hypothetical physiology and physics 
of the brain. " So long as we keep to the purely empirical 
ground of what, before and during the action, takes place in 
and before consciousness, it is not possible to demonstrate 
the validity of the causal law in the sphere of the will or of 
the mental life in general." 1 

To prove that all motivation is determination the deter- 
minist must take the "high priori road." Acts of choice, 
he insists, like all changes in the universe, are the inevitable 
outcome of the sum of previous conditions. " If man deter- 
mine himself," says Hobbes, " the question still remains, 
what determined him to determine himself in that particular 
manner," and the determinist insists that adequate knowledge 
of the man's previous character would in all cases enable us 
to give the answer. When A and B, as motives, solicit the 

1 H6ffding: Outlines, p. 344. 



2 1 1 ] FREED OM AS E THICAL EOS TULA TE g j 

will, and A is chosen instead of B, what was the motive, it is 
asked, for the choice of motive A? If you could assign 
some motive, say a, for the choice of motive A, the same 
question will recur in regard to this, and so on ad infinitum. 
The indeterminist at every stage will say the choice is free ; 
and the determinist will insist that it is determined or the 
cosmos is thrown into disorder. 

Kant says that there are some questions which should 
not be asked. Possibly the question of Hobbes quoted 
above is one of them. Such an infinite regress as the ques- 
tion suggests is unknown to psychology. The act of atten- 
tion, Professor Royce insists, is both cognitive and volitional. 
"Whenever an individual acts, his deed is at once, and insep- 
arably, an act of knowledge and an expression of purpose — 
an insight and a choice. . . . To attend is to be guided in 
your momentary deed by what you know, and determined 
in your knowledge by what you do. . . . An act of atten- 
tion, I repeat, is at once an act by which we come to know 
a truth, and an act by which we are led to an outward 
deed." 1 We have here, it seems, a sort of dead-lock be- 
tween the claims of the cognitive and volitional elements in 
attention which no analysis of the fact of motivation is able 
to break. 

In its application of causality to volition, determinism 
takes its cue from the causality of nature. Causation in na- 
ture might be reduced to a mere succession — a sort of Hera- 
clitean flux — from which all necessity except that of con- 
stant change was eliminated. It could then be asked, " If 
all things change, why not character also?" 2 Determinism 
in this case could admit the possibility of moral reform or 
degeneration, but apparently only at the expense of the sta- 
bility and reliability of character upon which such emphasis 
is laid. 

1 The World and the Individual, Second Series, pp. 353-356. 

2 See Dunkmann: Das Problem der Freiheit, Zurich, 1899, p. 21. 



82 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM \ 2 \2 

If, as is usually held, the causal principle demands that 
there should be among physical phenomena an unbroken 
chain of cause and effect, it is no demand of thought that 
thought itself and voluntary attention should be intermediate 
links in this chain. In the conscious sphere the application 
of the causal principle is different. It here demands that for 
every act of the conscious self there be a real actor, rather 
than that the actor himself should be necessitated or deter- 
mined to act as he does, and not otherwise. His own activity, 
rather than the changes among phenomena, will be to him the 
clearest revelation of what cause, in the full sense, is. To 
this view of the matter Dr. Martineau has given classic ex- 
pression ; "The psychologist insists that we carry the idea 
of causality with us into nature, instead of taking it thence ; 
that we do not discover it in the phenomena,-but insert it 
behind them ; that what we need from it is, to apprehend 
why they are so and not otherwise, and have the definite 
order into which they have set; and that apprehension is 
supplied in a determining will which might issue other things 
but does issue these. This determining power alone is what 
he understands by cause ; and whatever necessity there is 
(other than logical) is but the product of its freedom, the 
self-imposed method of its own action. In external nature, 
therefore, we must not look for alternative causation ; there, 
contingency has ceased ; it is the realm of immanent vo- 
litions, already in the executive stage, and parted from the 
essence and act of causality. From that field, therefore, the 
very object of our quest is absent in its initiative ; it is vain 
to seek the living among the dead." T 

Free-will in its moral bearings, or the capacity to choose 
between good and evil, doubtless implies an element of pure 
willfulness or caprice. An initial power to say " Evil, be thou 
my good," is correlative to the power to choose the highest 

1 A Study of Religion, vol. ii, pp. 233, 234. 



213] FREEDOM AS ETHICAL POSTULATE 83 

ideal and bring the entire life under the control of reason. 
Without the former, so far as we can see, the latter would 
lose moral significance, for a forced obedience to the moral 
law is no obedience at all. Difficult, as it doubtless is, to 
justify the postulate of freedom to the theoretical reason, its 
value for the practical reason is so great that ethics cannot 
afford to dispense with it. 



V 



FREE-WILL AND THEOLOGY 

In the theological aspect of the free-will controversy the 
question takes on at once its most difficult form, and the one 
most closely connected with our deepest interests. In a 
world governed by Supreme Intelligence, or Infinite Love, 
both the blind necessity of fatalism and the chaotic indeter- 
minateness of pure fortuitism or casualism are excluded ; 
but in the sphere of personal theories of the will the argu- 
ments favoring both determinism and indeterminism are 
raised to their highest power. Without venturing very far 
into this labyrinth, we shall try to indicate briefly the more 
prominent points of the discussion. 

If we are to escape from an infinite regress of finite causes — 

" Ex infinito ne causam causa sequatur," (Lucr. ii, 255) 

we have to postulate some ultimate Being behind the finite 
process. If the nature of this Being is impersonal, then 
necessity underlies freedom. If it is personal, then the 
question as to the primacy of the intellect or will inevitably 
arises. If in creating the world God had no power not 
to create it, that is, if the act of creation was necessary, then 
the divine choice being necessary, we must, as in the 
case of the relation of human motive and volition, ask the 
ground of this necessity, and a new regress is begun. The- 
ology at this point usually adopts the Augustinian view, that 
the creative act was not necessary, and that divine freedom 
is the ultimate principle of things. A theological corollary 
84 [214 



215"! FREE- WILL AND THE OLOGY 85 

from this doctrine of the divine freedom is that man, made 
in the image of God, is likewise free. He must share in the 
divine freedom if he is to be in a true sense a child of God, 
a co-worker with Him, and a partaker of the divine nature. 
If the belief in divine and human freedom are thus closely 
related in Christian theology, the same is true in specu- 
lative theism. The clearest revelation we have of the 
nature of God (outside of the Christian revelation) is in the 
nature of man. If there is no free spirit in man, no principle 
Of self-determining activity, distinguished from necessity, no 
free spirit will be found in the universe. On philosophical 
grounds the belief in God and freedom must stand or fall 
together. 

Historically, however, we find that both theism and dog- 
matic theology have raised some powerful objections to a 
belief in human free agency. The theological foes of free- 
will are the doctrine of sin, including the correlative doc- 
trine of grace, and the doctrine of the divine foreknowledge. 
The doctrine of sin has, it is true, deepened the sense of 
guilt and responsibility, but has emphasized the " slavery of 
the will," and admitted freedom, if at all, only in the sphere 
of civil and secular relations. The correlative doctrine of 
grace, as the all-important factor in moral regeneration, has 
tended to minimize the moral significance of the will ; while 
the doctrine of foreknowledge, as taught by an Augustinian 
theology and a speculative theory of the Absolute, has been 
urged against free-will with overwhelming force. 

Much of the discussion, so far as it is unfavorable to free- 
will, has concerned the present state of man, assuming him 
to be already corrupted and morally enslaved by sin, and it 
must here be admitted that the Augustinian insight into 
man's moral experience is deeper than the Pelagian. Many 
treatises on morals are, indeed, justly chargeable with super- 
ficiality — with ignoring, as has been said, "a whole hemi- 



8 6 THE FREE- WILL PR OBLEM \_2\6 

sphere of moral experience " — when they pass over the facts 
which find expression in Ovid's " Video meliora, etc.," or St. 
Paul's " Who shall deliver me ?" But admitting this limitation 
upon the will and its present impotence, unaided by divine 
grace, to attain to the highest spiritual good, the central ques- 
tion of the relation of sin in its most general conception to the 
divine agency or permission or foreknowlege still remains. 

That God cannot be the author of sin is the declaration of 
theologians of all schools. How then did sin arise? The 
argument for admitting free-will at this point is two-fold. 
The more strictly it is held that moral evil in the race is 
largely or mainly referable ultimately to the sin of Adam, 
that is, the more the responsibility for race sin is shifted back 
upon the first sinful choice, the greater the need of an initial 
ability in order to ground the responsibility. The first sin, 
secondly, cannot as in the case of later sinful choices be ex- 
plained as the outcome of a corrupt nature, for man, the- 
ology holds, was created in the moral image of God with an 
innocent and uncorrupted nature. 

The great champions of theological determinism, Augus- 
tine and Calvin, have, whether consistently or not, admitted 
free-will — that is, the power to choose between good and evil 
— at this point. "Primum liberum arbitrum posse non 
peccare, novissimum non posse peccare." (Be. Civ. Dei, XXII. 
37). "Adam might have stood if he chose, since it was 
only by his own will that he fell. . . . Still he had a free 
choice of good and evil," etc. (Calvin: Institutes, I. xv. 
8; cf. Westminster Confession of Faith, IX. 2.) 

But how is this initial act of free choice related to the 
divine foreknowledge and decree? Here is the crux of the 
whole question as to the relation between divine foreknowl- 
edge and human sin. If predestination means efficient 
causation, and if it applies in the same sense to both good 
and bad actions, the result is an unethical monism where 



•2J 7] FREE-WILL AND THEOLOGY %y 

moral qualifications are meaningless. We may hold an easy- 
going optimism in which the sense of guilt is regarded as 
illusory, and, according to a well-known formula, " God is 
good ; God is all." In strictness, though, all acts are re- 
duced to moral indifference, for nothing really remains which 
can be called the act of a finite personal agent. Moral and 
physical evil are reduced to the same category : 

" If plagues or earthquakes break not heaven's design, 
Why, then, a Borghia or a Cataline ? " 

Even to Professor Royce's notable attempt 1 to harmonize 
the human will and the divine will, serious objection may be 
taken from the moral standpoint. In his earlier exposition 
he says: "The many forms of will form one," and "the one 
will stands differentiated into the many." 2 "As to the rela- 
tion of this individual, as thus defined [as having a life-plan, 
or aiming toward an ideal], to God, I shall be equally ex- 
plicit. I assert (i) that the individual experience is identi- 
cally a part of God's experience, i. e., not similar to a por- 
tion of God's experience, but identically the same as such 
portion ; and (2) that the individual's plan is identically the 
same as God's attentively selected and universal plan." 3 

This conception of the Absolute as the principle (or Person) 
in which the life-plans of finite individuals are included and 
unified can hardly be, in spite of the author's assertion that 
it undertakes to be, 4 the conception of an ethical theism. 
The life-plans of bad as well as good men are equally in- 
cluded in the unity of the Absolute. "A relatively, although 
never a wholly diabolical or damnable individual life ideal is 
perfectly possible ; and the relative unity of an individual 

1 In the Conception of God, and The World and the Individual, Series I and II. 

2 Conception of God, p. 74. 

3 p. 292. 

4 p. 50. 



8 8 THE FREE- WILL PR OBLEM [ 2 1 8 

self can be, and often is, defined with reference to just such 
a relatively bad or devilish ideal." x When we read, a few 
pages later, that the individual plan " is identically a part of 
God's plan, so that the attention that thus selectively de- 
termines my ideal is not similar to, but actually identical 
with, the fragment of the Divine will, as defined earlier in 
this paper, i. e,, with an element of the Divine attention," 3 
we feel like insisting that such a relation of the One to the 
many is an unethical one, and that the complete identifica- 
tion of the Absolute with the Holy One of religion is impos- 
sible. Either the relatively diabolical life-plan, whether due 
to forgetfulness of the good, or the failure or refusal to attend 
to the good, is not really diabolical or sinful at all ; or else, 
when the good and the bad plans are alike merged in the 
Absolute plan as parts of it, ethical distinctions are trans- 
cended in the sense of being annulled. 

The moral consciousness, warned by the extreme inter- 
pretation which can be placed upon foreknowledge, may say 
" In the name of human morality, let us limit the foreknowl- 
edge of God." 3 This is the position of Professor James and 
Dr. Martineau. Foreknowledge, the latter admits, is an 
attribute proper to Deity; but the creation of moral beings 
implies a self-limitation of the divine foreknowledge. 4 That 
the solution is not wholly satisfactory is shown by Professor 
James' attempt to carry it out by the use of the chess-board 
illustration. 5 The divine Player cannot foresee the particular 
move which the novice, the human agent, is to make, but as 
He knows all possible moves and the reply to be made to 

1 pp. 288 / 

2 p. 293. 

3 See Picard, Christianity or Agnosticism, p. 162. 
* Study of Religion, vol. ii, pp. 262-263. 

5 Will to Believe, pp. 181 f. The illustration was used in a somewhat different 
connection by Hazard: Freedom of the Mind in Willing, Bk. I, ch. xii. 



L.cfC.' 



2I q] FREE-WILL AND THEOLOGY 89 

each, the issue of the game is certain. We admire here the 
boldness with which chance or contingency is brought into 
the universe, but we notice that even Professor James, to use 
his own figure (p. 180), is careful to tie a string to the bird 
lest it fly out of his sight. To the divine Contestant the 
outcome of the game is certain and predetermined, although 
the several moves are contingent upon an unforseen human 
choice. 

Two remarks may here be ventured. The arguments for 
throwing back upon the Creator the responsibility for human 
sin are equally strong whether or not sin was foreseen, as 
possible or as certain. The creation of a world where pres- 
ent evils physical and moral (or worse evils) were only fore- 
seen as possible, or again the creation of a world of sentient 
beings where nothing was known as to what they would do or 
suffer, is surely as difficult to reconcile with the divine per- 
fections, as a world whose actual evils were perfectly foreseen. 
If evil is to be, mere foreknowledge of it (excluding now 
authorship of evil) does not detract from the moral attributes 
of God. The existence of evil and its providential permission, 
not its foreknowledge, is the real point of difficulty. Sec- 
ondly, such providential control as Professor James postu- 
lates may be conceived as so extensive as to be as hard to 
reconcile with human responsibility as is complete foreknowl- 
edge. Human thoughts and desires may in their very incep- 
tion be the moves on the chess-board whose possibility the 
divine Player foresees and is ready to meet. In fact, if they 
are not, the very issue of the game as well as the successive 
moves may be left in doubt, and evil instead of good may 
triumph in the universe. The " first springs of thought and 
will" may be then so under'divine control that the "fountain 
of contingency " may be practically closed, and the region 
given over to chance and uncertainty, may be reduced to a 
minimum. Certainly, the relation of the divine Spirit to the 



£0 THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM \_22Q 

human spirit, can be no merely external one, and we may- 
argue ad hominem that if such a providential control of human 
volition as shall certainly secure the fulfillment of the divine 
plan is not inconsistent with freedom, no more is a fore- 
knowledge of the steps which lead to that fulfillment. The 
sovereignty of God in His providence is as difficult to recon- 
cile with free-will as His sovereignty in predestination. 

A thoroughly moral view of the world will hold both to 
the validity of moral distinctions — the ultimate difference 
between right and wrong — and to the final triumph of the 
right. Fatalism or hyper-Augustinian predestination leaves 
no room for the former; but a cosmological doctrine of 
chance or of unlimited freedom leaves open the possibility 
of a final moral anarchy, in place of a reign of righteousness. 

The denial either of the sovereignty of God in the interests 
of free-will, or of free-will in the interests of sovereignty, may 
seem intellectually more heroic than the attempt to har- 
monize the two, yet apart from deduced consequences there is 
no self-evident contradiction between them. " The two great 
postulates of divine sovereignty and human freedom carry a 
convincing note of reality, as the distant conclusions to which 
they have been speculatively carried do not." 1 A theodicy 
which at once asserts eternal providence and human free- 
dom may find support in the complementary feelings of 
dependence and of guilt or responsibility upon which, empiri- 
cally, these doctrines may be said to rest. 

The apparent " antinomy," so far as it affects our view of 
God, is between the metaphysical attributes of omniscience 
(including knowledge of all the future) and omnipotence, 
and the moral attributes of holiness and justice. That no 
purely speculative solution is for our thought possible may 
follow from the nature of the case, for in the relation of the 
human to the divine will, the deepest problems of philosophy, 

1 T. S. Hamlin, D. D., in Independent, Jan. 1 6, 1902. 



22 1 ] FREE-WILL AND THEOLOGY g l 

both intellectual and moral, are focused. The problem in- 
volves the relation of the one to the many, of being to be- 
coming, of the eternal to the temporal, of the perfect to the 
imperfect, of the Holy One to that evil in the creature whose 
very existence casts for us a shadow upon the complete ra- 
tionality of the universe. Modern theology has, we believe, 
in these circumstances rightly chosen to follow our deepest 
moral and religious instincts rather than to sacrifice either to 
the supposed claims of speculative consistency. The re- 
ligious consciousness shrinks from holding that God was the 
author of sin, or that He could create a world without 
knowledge of the consequences of the creative act; and our 
moral experience testifies not only to a freedom of choice 
which shall make morality possible, but to the working of a 
Power not ourselves, which makes for righteousness, and 
works not to annihilate the human will, but to secure an 
ethical harmony between it and the divine. 



INDEX. 



Absolute, the, 64, 87 f. 

Aristotle, 9 

Attention, 61, 81 

Augustine, 10, 85, 86 

Automatism, 13; arguments for, 14 f.; 
objections to, 16 ff.; and evolution, 
44 {.; and illusion of freedom, 54 

Baldwin, 41,42 n., 61 n. 
Bastian, 26 
Bayle, 58 
Bradley, 9, 30 n., 64 

Calkins, Miss M. W., 56 

Calvin, 10, 86 

Carpenter, 26 

Causation, 36 f., 52, 78, 79, 80 ff. 

Chance, 75, 89 

Conn, H. W., 47 

Conservation of Energy, 18 f., 23 f., 33, 

35 
Consciousness, origin of, 40; function 

of in evolution, 44 ff. 
Couailhac, 35 n. 
Creighton, J. E., 55 n. 

Darwin, 46, 47 

Delboeuf, 60 n. 

Deliberation, 28, 55. {See Motive.) 

Descartes, 10, 12, 35, 63 

Determinism, mechanical, 38, 40, 53; 
and heredity, 51; and consciousness 
of freedom, 57 f.; and character, 68, 
71; and morality, 71, 74; in what 
sense essential to freedom, 78; and 
motivation, 80 f.; and causation, 52, 
81 f. 

Dunkmann, 81 n. 

Epicureans, IO 

Evolution, and the free-will controversy, 
38 f.; and origin of consciousness, 
40 ff. ; and efficiency of mind, 44 ff. ; 
place of great men in, 48 ff . 



Fatalism, 16, 33, 74, 90 

Fiske, 75 

Foreknowledge, 85 ff. 

Foster, Sir M., 26 

Fouillee, 58, 59 

Freedom of expression and initiation, 
12 f.; consciousness of, 52 ff.; illu- 
sion of, 58f.; idea of, 59; as postulate 
of ethics, 67 ff.; goal of, 76 f. 

Free-will, problem of, 9 f.; and psycho- 
physical theories, 13 f., 31; and evo- 
lution, 38 f., 47 f.; and existence of 
self, 61 f.; and responsibility, 71 ff.; 
and chance, 75 ; and theology, 84 ff. 

Fullerton, 75 

Great men, in social progress, 48 ff . 
Goltz, 26 
Green, T. H., 69 
Guyau, 58, 79 

Haeckel, 38 

Hamlin, T. S., 90 n. 

Hazard, 70 n., 88 n. 

Headley, 42 

Heredity, 50 f., 70 f., 74 

Hibben, 34 n. 

Hobbes, 80 

Hoffding, 1 8, 20, 80 n. 

Hollander, 26 n., 74 n. 

Howison, 9 

Hume, 10, 37 

Huxley, 15, 16, 17, 18, 68 

Hypnotic suggestion, 17, 58 

Indeterminism, 39; arguments for, 52 f.; 
and chance, 75. {See Determinism, 
Free-will.) 

Interactionism, 13; forms of, 34 f. ; and 
conservation of energy, 35 ; and caus- 
ation, 36 f.; and evolution, 47 

Jackson, Hughlings, 26 
Tames, Wm., 9, 53, 59, 61, 88 
Joyau, 58 n., 73 n. 



(93) 



94 



INDEX 



Kant, 10, 12,62,81 

Knowledge, and parallelism, 31 ; of 
other selves, 30; of self, 62 ff. 

Ladd, 59 n. 

Lamarck, 46 

Leibnitz, 10, 12 

Libertarianism, 14, 34, 47, 57 n. {See 

Indeterminism, Free-will.) 
Localization of brain functions, 25 f. 
Lodge, Sir O., 49 
Loeb, 26, 54 f. 
Lotze, 43 n. 

Mackenzie, 78 

Mallock, 9 

Martineau, 9, 82, 88 

Momerie, 62 n. 

Motive, 57, 60 f., 75 f., 80 f. 

Miiffelmann, 72 n. 

Munsterberg, 54 f. 

Necessarianism, 16, 47. {.See Deter- 
minism, mechanical.) 
Necessity, 69, 74, 77 

Ormond, 65 n. 

Parallelism, 13 f.; its meaning, 21 f.; 

its extent, 22 ff.; arguments for, 24; 

objections to, 25 ff. ; instability of, 20, 

31 f.; idealistic reduction of, 33; and 

evolution, 45 f. 
Paulsen, 20 n. 

" Personal Idealism," authors of, 9 
Plato, 9 



Responsibility, 70 ff. 

Rhiel, 27 n., 71, 75 

Rhythm, subjective accentuation of, 27 

Romanes, 42 n. 

Royce, 9, 48, 81, 87 

Self, existence of, 62 ff.; knowledge of, 

63 

Seth, A., 55 n., 62 
Shakespeare, 49 f. 
Sigwart, 36 n. 

Sin, doctrine of, 85; origin of, 86; fore- 
knowledge of, 89 
Smith, Goldwin, 38 
Spencer, 34 n., 41, 65 
Spiller, 49 f. 
Spinoza, 10, 58 

Spontaneity, 13, 19, 32, 53, 70, 74 
Stout, 20, 23, 29 n. 

Thilly, 57 n. 
Thorndike, 48 n. 
Titchener, 45 
Tyndal, 40 

" Vicarious functioning," 27 

Volition, as cause of movement, 17; 

and brain-movement, 22, 26; and 

motives, 57, 69 

Ward, J., 9, 16 n., 30 n., 42, 62 

Will, as complex of sensations, 54 f.; 
and knowledge of self, 62. {See Free- 
will.) 

Windelband, 10 n. 

Wundt, 13, 20, 23, 28, 65 

Ziehen, 13, 20, 22 



VOLUME IV 

[The issues contained in Volumes IV, V and IX are also published as Monograph 
Supplements to the Psychological Review. ~\ 

1. On Sensations from Pressure and Impact. By Harold Gripping, 

Ph.D. 8vo, paper. Price, 60 cents net. 

2. Mental Imagery. By Wilfred Lay, Ph.D., sometime Fellow in 

Philosophy, Columbia University. 8vo, paper. Price 50 cents net. 

3. Animal Intelligence. By Edward L. Thorndike, Ph.D., Adjunct 

Professor of Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University. 
8vo, paper. Price, $1.00 net. 

4. The Emotion of Joy. By George V. N. Dearborn, Ph.D., Assist- 

ant Professor of Physiology in Tufts College. 8vo, paper. Price, 75 
cents net. 

VOLUME V 

1. Conduct and the Weather. By Edwin G. Dexter, Ph.D., Professor 

of Pedagogy in the University of Illinois, Champaign, 111. 8vo, 
paper. Price, $1.00 net. 

2. On After-images. By Shepherd I. Franz, Ph.D., Instructor in 

Physiology, Dartmouth Medical College. 8vo, paper. Price, 75 
cents net. 

3. Inhibition. By BurTis B. BreESE, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology 

and Ethics in the University of Tennessee. 8vo, paper. Price, 75 
cents net. 

4. On the Accuracy of Voluntary Movement. By Robert S. Wood- 

worth, Ph.D., Instructor in Psychology, Columbia University. 8vo, 
paper. Price, $1.00 net. 

VOLUME VI 

1-4. Educational Legislation and Administration in the Colonies. 

By Elsie Worthington Clews, (Parsons) Ph.D., Lecturer in 
Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University. 8vo, paper, pp. 
xi+524. Price, $2.00 net. 

VOLUME VII 

1. The Education of the Pueblo Child. By Frank C. Spencer, Ph.D., 

Principal of North-Western Normal School, New Mexico. 8vo, 
paper, pp. 97. Price, 75 cents net. 

2. The Economic Aspect of Teachers' Salaries. By Chari.es Bart- 

LETT Dyke, A.M., Principal of Kamehameha Schools, Honolulu, H. I. 
8vo, paper, pp. 84. Price, $1.00 net. 

3. Education in India. By William I. Chamberlain, Ph.D., Presi- 

dent of Vellore College, India. 8vo, paper, pp. 108. Price, 75 cents 
net. 

4. Horace Mann in Ohio : a study of the application of his public school 

ideas to college administration. By GEORGE Allen Hubbell, A.M., 
sometime Professor at Antioch College. 8vo, paper, pp. 70. Price, 
50 cents net. 

VOLUME VIII 

1. Imitation in Education : its nature, scope and significance. By Jas- 
per Newton Deahl, A.M., sometime Fellow in Education, Teachers 
College, Columbia University. 8vo, paper, pp. 103. Price, 60 cents 
net. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS « 

020 196 596 2 



2. Historical Development of School Beading Books and of Method 
in Teaching Beading. By Rudolph Rex Reeder, Ph.D., Super- 
intendent of the School of the Orphan Asylum, Hastings, N. Y. 8vo, 
paper, pp. 92. Price, 60 cents net. 

3-4. Notes on Child Study. (Second Edition.) By Edward Lee 
ThorndikE, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor of Psychology, Teachers Col- 
lege, Columbia University. 8vo, paper, pp. 181. Price, $1.00 net. 

VOLUME IX 

1. The Mental Life of the Monkeys. By E. D. Thorndike, Ph.D., 

Adjunct Professor of Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia Uni- 
versity. 8vo, paper; pp. iv+57. Price, 50 cents net. 

2. The Correlation of Mental and Physical Tests. By C. Wissler, 

Lecturer in Pedagogy, School of Pedagogy, New York University. 
8vo, paper, pp. iv+62. Price, 50 cents net. 

3. The Practice Curve : A study in the formation of habits. By Joseph 
HERSHEY Bair, Ph.D., Assistant in Anthropology in Columbia 
University. 8vo, paper, pp. 70. Price, 75 cents net. 

4. Motor, Visual, and Applied Rhythms : an experimental study and 

a revised explanation. By James BurT Miner, Ph.D.. Instructor 
in Psychology, University of Illinois. 8vo, paper, pp. 106. Price, 
$1.00 net. 

VOLUME X 

1. The Problem of Metaphysics and the Meaning of Metaphysical 
Explanation. An Essay in Definitions. By Hartley Burr Alex- 
ander, Ph.D., sometime Fellow in Philosophy in Columbia Univer- 
sity. 8vo, paper, pp. 131. Price, 75 cents net. 

% The Free Will Problem in Modern Thought. By William Hal- 
lock Johnson, Ph.D., Prof essor of Greek and New Testament Lit- 
erature in Lincoln University, Penn'a. 8vo, paper, pp. 94. Price, 
75 cents net. 

VOLUME XI 

1. School Administration in Municipal Government. By Frank J. 

Rollins, Ph.D., Assistant Principal, Morris High School, N. Y. City, 
8vo, paper, pp. 106. Price, 75 cents net. 

2. Heredity, Correlation and Sex Difference in School Abilities. By 

Edward L. Thorndike, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor of Psychology, 
Teachers College, Columbia University. 8vo, paper, pp. 60. Price, 
50 cents net. 

3-4. A Historical and Critical Discussion of College Admission Be- 
quirements. By E. C. Broome, Ph.D., sometime Fellow in Teach- 
ers College, Columbia University. 8vo, paper, pp. 157. Price, $1.00 
net. 

VOLUME XII 

<' 
1. The Professional Training of Secondary Teachers in the United 
States. By G. W. A. Luckey, Ph.D., Professor of Education, Uni- 
versity of Nebraska. 8vo, paper, pp. 336. Price, $1.25 net. 



